Family Movie Night

I had a really great childhood. My parents excelled in making memories and giving us opportunities to experience life. We traveled, we played, we saw, we did.

I want my girls to have the same kind of childhood. One they can look back on and think fondly.

One of my memories was our Friday tradition. Along with all other families in the nineties, we enjoyed TGIF as a family. We would often times make homemade pizza or some other kid friendly dinner, followed by having dinner in the living room. That was a rarity.

After watching the shows on TGIF, we would watch a family movie and have a camp out in the living room. It was simple. It was memorable.

The last couple weeks we have tried to implement our version of this memory with family movie night.

The first week we saw the new version of Annie. The girls loved it. Though the lead's straight hair kept Maggie wondering when she would get curly hair like her.They watched the movie in its entirety (though we did skip a slow song or two). Then the rest of the week Maggie sang her version of "It's a Hard Knock Life." And when I asked her to do one thing or another she often times responded with, "I love you Ms. Hannigan." They could be heard playing Annie, arguing over who would be ANnie and who would be Molly. Usually reenacting the same scene over and over.

Now our movie nights are not very fancy. I searched Pinterest for ideas to make our night special. Many were special menus that coincided with the movie, or crafts or decor. There were great ideas, and time consuming costly ideas. We opted for ease and simplicity.

The girls each got a part of our dinner to make themselves (with a bit of help from mommy.) Fruit salad, pepperoni subs and green beans were our menu. The girls did great helping, when they weren't eating all of the ingredients.

Then we started the movie. This week I chose Chitty Chitty Bang Bang from the library. It was interesting for the first hour or so, but I don't remember it being so LONG...or so strange. I'm not sure the girls have enough experience with British accents, so they didn't really seem as into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as they were in Annie.

Ellie sat still long enough to enjoy our Cinnamon Sugar Popcorn treat, until she realzied she didn't like popcorn. Then she was off and playing in the play room.

Maggie lasted through her entire bowl of popcorn and each were drawn back for each song. We have dance parties whenever music is on.

About an hour and twenty minutes into the movie we realized we still had over an hour to go and decided to call it a night. The girls didn't seem to mind, since they weren't really paying much attention anyway.

I suppose there are certain movies from my childhood that my 4 and 2 year old just aren't ready for. I'm in no rush for them to grow up though, so I'll stick to the animated movies for a bit longer. Then I'll introduce them to the wonderful world of musicals!