Today was a rare day, we did something that was to me so indulgent, so luxurious, we spent most of the day at the movie theater. I have always thought how decadent and how much fun it would be to watch several movies in the same day, and today presented itself as such a day.
Our local movie theatre has begun to run family movies on Saturdy mornings. The family movies are older movies for the low price of $2.50 (remember when that was what movies cost on half price Tuesdays back in high school). Today they were running "A Christmas Story". Don't ask me why, but Christopher has done nothing but talk about wanting to take the kids to see it. I was not as excited as he was, but was all on board for inexpensive fun, and A Christmas Story is a really funny movie.
The theatre was not packed, there were lots of great seats, I like that. We all sat down and waited for the movie to begin. It had barely begun when we noticed that the sound was terrible. It sounded like we were listening to the sound in a bucket. Christopher went out and told someone. There were a few technical blips, that involved the movie starting and stopping. Eventually a theatre employee came in and announced that due to the technical difficulties they would refund everyone's money, or give them movie passes, or they could continue to watch the show. We chose the latter, most of the other people chose to leave. We laughed at all of the familiar hilarious parts. At one point I laughed so hard and so loud (remember the part where Ralphie goes to tell Santa that he really wants a Red Rider Bee Bee gun. As the elf tosses Ralphie down the slide, he realizes that he froze and never told Santa what he wanted. My favourite part of the whole movie is where Santa puts his foot on Ralphie's face and pushes him down the big red slide all the while saying "HO HO HO"), I humiliated my husband and kids. We made the best of it, and enjoyed the movie in spite of the bad sound. The nice treat was that as we left the theatre, there was an employee handing out passes for a free future family movie.
We had an hour and a half before we were meeting up with my parents to see movie number 2, "Rise of the Guardians". The kids were starving, so we headed to Arby's for lunch. We sat around the two tables pushed together, enjoying each other's company, we don't do that enough. We were finished lunch with enough time to head back to the theatre for washroom breaks and the concession stand (we had a really light lunch so that we could indulge in popcorn).
Our family took up most of the back row (I have discovered that I really like the back row, because there are no dumb dumbs to kick the back of your seat). We all settled in. It was a really great movie. There were numerous times that the kids, and my husband looked over expectantly to see if I was crying ... I was. I also sat there with a stupid grin on my face just enjoying the joy of it. We were all together, getting ready to fill with the Christmas spirit. My love enveloped most of the back row (oh heck I have enough love that I could have shared with the two strangers at the end of our row). I sat there feeling thankful that we could do this. It really was not an expensive day (I got a great deal on the tickets at CAA), but more than that, it was special. We may never do something so decadent as that again, but it was a special day, and one I hope that the kids will remember, even if they forget the movies that they saw.
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