Braving "Brave"

Next time I will take a hint.

With the kids out of school on Friday for a teacher in service day, and my vacation balance perilously close to 0 while Kevin's vacation balance has barely a dent in it (can you say work-o-holic??) I thought it would be a good opportunity for Kevin and the kids to take the day off and do something fun.  However, despite that OUT OF OFFICE notice on his calendar for months he interpreted it more like a work from home day while the dvd player baby sat as he did conference calls in the morning, and then dropped the kids off with me at 11 so he could go to another meeting.  Luckily thanks to my notebook's DVD drive, a thankfully vacant conference room with a projector, and my computer's ability to do split screen the kids watched a never before seen Scooby Doo while I caught up on a backlog of email and finished up some meeting minutes. And when Kevin was finally done we headed out to lunch.

As we waited for our lunch while Connor worked on a puzzle, and Ryan took his new Batman car out for spin I broke my cardinal rule for phones at the table and surfed the local movie theater showtimes.  Determined for the kids to do at least one fun thing on their off day I thought a movie might be a nice treat given the melting 100 degree temperatures outside.  I was surprised at the number of good things to see that were out at the theater now.  I picked up a book based on the Brave movie about a week ago and had mentally flagged it as something to pick up on DVD when it came out.  So when I saw that it was at the theaters now I thought it would be the perfect movie to send Kevin and the kids off to this afternoon.  Unfortunately the only show times for the day had already passed and Kevin declared that he had to attend a 2pm conference call and wanted to go into the office for a 3pm meeting.  So much for his fun day with the kids.  Luckily, expanding the search I found a 6:50pm at AMC.  As it was naptime for the kids we dropped the work-a-holic back off at work and I took the kids home to nap while I worked from home the rest of the afternoon.  Thankfully, despite being dumped on the living room couches instead of their beds upstairs, they slept until 4:30.  And then entertained themselves for the short time before Kevin made it home so I could finish up one last thing just in time to head out to the movies.

We made it to the AMC about 20 minutes before show time and were the first and only people in the theater for a good 15 minutes.  So the kids ran around and danced to work off some of that excess energy while I cringed at the disgustingly dirty theater with napkins still littering chairs and the floor in several places.  About a dozen more people trickled in about the time Kevin returned with popcorn and the lights dimmed signaling the start of the previews.

As each preview started the kids asked loudly if this was the movie.  Despite shushing and admonishments to keep their voices down they continued though each new preview.  And at the end of each preview Kevin would ask in his loud voice in the middle of the absolute quiet if they wanted to go see that one.  By the time the movie started the boys had downed almost the entire large bag of popcorn and were ready for the movie to start already.  But not nearly so much as I was... :)

With the movie on to captivate them things were go swimmingly well until the first scene with the bear.  Despite seeing all kinds of Scooby Doo monsters, and villains of every shape and form Connor didn't like the bear.  He (in his movie going loud voice) said he couldn't watch and buried his head into my shoulder through the end of the scene.  After the scene was over he returned to his chair, laughed at various parts of the movie and returned to his popcorn munching.  But the second the bear popped up again (even the nice bear, or the baby bears) he went crazy and couldn't watch it anymore and insisted loudly that he was ready to go home.  Now.  Kevin took him outside for a few minutes while Ryan and I watched the movie. When they came back Connor sat in my lap and alternated covering his hands over his eyes and peeking through his fingers while I whispered in his ear that it was just the nice bear and it was okay to look.

We did manage to make it all the way through the end of the movie, but Connor is quite adamant the he NEVER wants to see this movie again.  Apparently the whole showtime and Kevin's Day out fiasco was the universe's way of trying to warn me that this was movie was NOT for us... Maybe next time I will listen.  :)