Outdoor Movies - The Night We Were Almost Eaten Alive

    My husband is the love of my life, but he is not a man to be easily persuaded. Case in point, we have lived in our house for 11 years now.  From year 2 of living in our house I tried to persuade my husband that we should buy a pool.  He listed all of the reason's it was a terrible idea.  Summer after summer we sweated until I thought we would die.  Four years ago, I think I threatened divorce if we did not get a pool.  We bought one of those non-permanent pools that you put together every year and fill with water.  It's about 4 feet deep and 15 feet in diameter.  It's perfect for us.  The funniest thing of all is that the man who fought the pool the hardest is the one who uses it the most, and loves it the most.  So you might think that this would be a lesson to my dear sweet husband that I am always right, but he still fights me tooth and nail on everything.

    After we had the pool, I started my campaign for a projector.  It was once again a hard sell.  I had visions of us sitting outside, bonding and making life long memories.  In my head we would all laugh, and everyone we knew would be jealous of us.  The kid's would invite friends over, life would be good.  Two years ago I think I may have threatened divorce and we bought a Sharper Image projector for a family Christmas gift.  I will be honest we went with cheaper Sharper Image projector instead or Epson projector that we should have gone with.  It was the difference between $100 and $700.  For a cheap machine, the Sharper Image one actually works pretty good for what we use it for.  

    Last summer was a beautiful blur of swimming, fires in our outdoor fireplace, and outdoor movies.  In other words it was a summer that we made beautiful memories.  This year has been the hottest, driest summer that I can ever remember.  We have gotten plenty of use of the pool.  There is a fire ban right now where we live, so we can't use the fire place.  It takes about half an hour to set the movie up. To a pair of really, really lazy people that is off putting.  

    We decided that a movie was worth the effort, we would have a movie.  Last night we were really smart and started setting our movie us just after dinner.  We were humming and happy, I was certain that we might just be the greatest parents in the world.  Nana and Papa were invited over.  We set up the chairs.  I spent half an hour making pop corn.  We selected "A Dolphin's Tale".  The kids were liberally sprayed with "Off", and mosquito coils were lit.  We were ready.  We each selected our spots, treats in hand.  I had my glass of wine in hand, ready for the movie.  

    After the last person was seated (it was me, it's always me), Christopher started the movie.  I should add that it is not just a "movie", Christopher sets up a surround sound system.  It generally takes a while to set everything up, but it is a great movie experience.  We are sitting, excitedly waiting for the movie to begin.  As we sat there, a plague of mosquitos desended upon us.  It was not just some mosquitos, it was of biblical proportions.  I honestly could barely see the movie screen for the literal cloud of mosquitos.  The kids were getting a pit paniced with all of the bites they were receiving.  Christopher kept telling them "but you're wearing off!"  One of the kids shouted out something like " You should tell that to the mosquitos that are biting me!"  I sat there, wine in hand, watching my beautiful summer memories being eaten alive, not unlike my children.  It was shortly after that that Grace announced she was going in.  Rowan quickly followed suite.  

I have never seen so many mosquitos in my entire life.  I gave up, I just surrendered.  "Let's go inside."  I proclaimeg, resisting the urge to kick something in temper.  I thought Christopher was going to cry.

    The end of the story goes something like this... we went into the air conditioned house and watched our movie, it was a good movie.  In the end we did make summer memories that will last forever, as perhaps will the scars that the kid's have given themselves from over scratching bites.  We will all remember, although not necessarily fondly the summer of 2012 where we had plagues of mosquitos, and did nothing outside at night.