Day 208 - Snagged Starlight Cinema

You know when you have what you think is a great idea, and then you discover that it's a bit more complicated than you originally thought it might be?  That was my evening.

So, the city is hosting these downtown movie nights, and I thought the girls might enjoy seeing Toy Story and since they have never been to a drive-in, I thought the novelty of the event would be appealing.

Our first snag was that although the schedule said the movie would be Toy Story, the film to was changed to Despicable Me today because of licensing issues. Next snag? Seating.  I didn't realize that we didn't actually own three beach chairs until we needed another beach chair, so we had to make a trip to the drugstore to buy one.

We ate dinner, packed snacks, blankets, chairs and sweatshirts and headed downtown.  It was a beautiful warm night, perfect for an outdoor movie. The movie was going to start at dusk. Snag 3? I have no idea when dusk is. We got to the street around 7, and the movie didn't start until much, much later. Like 8:30.  Hanging out with two 6 year olds on a street is not as much fun as you might imagine. Add in general seating and you get to move the beach chairs 3 times in 6 minutes and then listen to 45 minutes of them critiquing the location of our seats in relation to the screen, the people in front of us, and anyone that seems like they might be encroaching on what the girls now considered their territory.  It was exhausting.

However, through some sort of divine intervention, I had the idea to text Carmen, who suggested that I get the girls a milkshake from the diner down the street and decided to come and meet up with us. Thank goodness, because that solved snag 4, how to save seats at an outdoor movie, and take 2 kids to wait in a very slow line for milkshakes. You don't. Carmen shows up and distracts the children while you go and buy milkshakes and fries and wait in the slow line.

And finally the movie begins, and the girls can sort of see the screen and they are fine with the change in films and we hit snag 5- the movie doesn't play... and when it does, no one can hear it...Which quickly leads to snag 6:  we are sitting on the street in lawn chairs with the public, who at the first sign of issue start yelling at the screen, and then each other.  I swear I read an article about how crime decreased at a skate park when a roof was added to provide a "ceiling," I can't find it now of course, but this article touches at the same thing. My point? People watching a movie outside don't behave as well as people watching a movie inside. However, the woman behind me made this prophetic statement,  "I have faith they will fix it. They will work it out" and they did.  The movie started to play without stopping, the volume increased, the audience calmed down and we sat outside and watched.

Snag 7- The movie was over very late and the girls were very tired.  We were a good 2 hours past bedtime and they were asking to go to home to sleep.  On the drive home, I asked them if they wanted to go to watch Toy Story in 2 weeks they told me, "No, we did it one time, that was enough."  Message received.