Ivie's First Movie

It's almost hard to admit, but, until this afternoon, Ivie had never been to see a movie. For a couple whose "date nights" (pre-kids, when every night was date night!) often revolved around the latest release, I'm ashamed. But given Ivie's very short attention span, we weren't sure how she would do.

So I had found online that our theater supposedly (note that word for future reference) did free movies at 10a on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays during the summer. And this week, they were showing "The Bee Movie", which is one of Ivie's all-time (and that's a long time, folks) movies. What a perfect way to see how she'd handle a movie theater, right? Free, at 10a (so you know it's going to be primarily kids), and with dollar popcorn and drinks. So if it went poorly, we could skip right out of there, not spending much money and already knowing how the movie ended. (Which, by the way, have I ever mentioned on here that I love Sheryl Crow's version of "Here Comes the Sun" from the end of the movie, but that I'm very upset that you can't buy JUST THAT SONG on iTunes? You have to buy THE WHOLE SOUNDTRACK. Annoying.)

Anyway, back to the movie story. Dale planned his meetings today around the showing (sure is nice to be in sales sometimes!), and the 3 of us (with Macie happily at school) headed to the theater in plenty of time to get our snacks and settle in (and maybe take a few pictures for the blog). Only to get there and find a very dark theater. Noone there. We finally happened upon an employee, who said that the free movies we read about online were only in the Myrtle Beach theater. So get it off your website, people!

We had one very sad little girl. And a sad mommy and daddy to boot.

So, being the suckers for sad little girls that we are, we decided to check the movie schedule and hit up the next kids' show that was playing. Dale rearranged his schedule (thanks, Daddy!), and, at 12:20p, we entered the theater eager to see "Up". In 3-D, no less (thanks to the $2/ticket surcharge to pay for the glasses).

So we went from free with cheap snacks to $8.75 per ticket and expensive hot dogs/popcorn/soda...

But as you'll see below, it was well worth it. Ivie wore the 3-D glasses for a while, but soon grew weary of having to "dodge" the various things that appeared to be coming right at her face (I even flinched a couple of times). So she took them off and watched the rest of the movie without them. As a result, I wonder if she'll go into her next movie wondering if it's going to be as blurry as her first one! She might start shouting for "HD already, people!" if we're not careful! But aside from not wanting to wear the glasses, she was a sweet girl, spending a bit of time on each of our laps, and pounding her hot dog and Sprite.

My favorite part of the experience was when Ivie, in case there was every any doubt, proved that she belongs to us. At the end, when Kevin the bird is saved and returned to his home and babies, she started weeping. I asked her why she was crying, and she said that she didn't want them to leave Kevin! She wanted the bird to stay with them. So she's definitely inherited our sensitive gene - Dale and I have been known to shed a tear or two in the movie theater ourselves. But the good news is that at least I knew that she had followed the storyline!

Successful day. I think we can look forward to many more fun movie dates with the girls...