Playing catch up

My son was adorable today and I was a good parent. These two things made me want to blog. Then I logged in and discovered that its been more than 14 days, for shame!, since my last post.

In an attempt to rectify the situation I'll catch you up on my thrilling life and as a bonus I'll share my sons adorableness and my freakishly amazing parenting skills.

So, the last two weeks. I had a crazy week before spring break. Work was overwhelming, we had evening school events and I was on a hormonal rollercoaster that had me screaming at my best friend and sobbing two seconds later while she patiently listened to me unleash the crazy at her over the phone.

One of the evening school events was, "artist in me night." My husband claims that he took a video so as soon as I find the right cord I will unleash the awesomeness on all of my Facebook friends. Be warned, it's pretty cute. My twins sang Disney songs in the choir and my youngest was voted in as the choir mascot so he was the announcer for the evening. The kids were really nervous and kept forgetting to smile so my sister (the choir director) and I came up with a plan to have my youngest child appear in costumes to announce each song and surprise the kids in the choir. It worked well at bringing out their smiles and speech impediment and all he was a minor celebrity the next day. My twins love choir and I am so thankful that my sister offers it for free at their school.

Then spring break happened. Last week was outstanding! We all really needed the break. We had grand plans to build things. Our grand plans never happened but we filled our days with fun moments. Here are the highlights: date night for mommy and daddy while boys go to the YMCA, hanging out with our best friends and their adorable daughter, a great dog walk with friends, bus trip to lahaina, movies, movies and more movies, a lot of pizza, a trip to the laVendar farm, a new pet that died, cleaning out the garage, the famous Mallo ribs, lots and lots of swimming, a beach day that reminded me that we need more beach days and a craft day that began my sisters newest obsession. Like I said, we had good times!

During the last two weeks we also had the fall of the family challenge. Remember the challenge? I only exercised one day but nobody checked up on me for a week so I wasn't the first to lose. All 3 boys got 2nd chances since their challenges were unfair for some reason or other (or so they argued) Our youngest was the first to fail, he just can't seem to put anything away so about 3 days into the challenge his messy room caused him to lose. I was the second loser once they finally got around to checking on my progress. Our oldest lost after a week. Realistically he was grumpy every day but we kept giving warnings. Finally he had a day with 3 warnings in a row which my husband declared as a loss and which caused our oldest to throw the most epic temper tantrum we've seen in a long time. Two weeks in and our middle child reached his second Saturday. He was owning his challenge and we all thought he had a chance to win it all but there's something about Saturday's that just made it impossible for him to brush his hair. After several comments from people on his "interesting" hairdo we declared him a loser as well. Less than halfway through and my husband was the last man standing. Knowing that st. Patrick's day was coming up he began looking for loopholes so he wouldn't have to go beer free while celebrating 3/17. as a family we decided that as last man standing he could resign from the race. It meant no prize but also meant no punishment. And that was the family challenge. A little anticlimactic but a learning experience to be sure.

And it folds up, such a cool chair!

Sorry it's sideways and for the weird checker shadows.

The 3rd times a charm headboard plus ninja pillow.

While I'm on the subject of unfinished stories I should mention that we have gotten a lot done on the redecorating front. My bathroom is the worlds most amazing place and my own personal spa retreat. It still doesn't have a finished door but other than that, it's my dream come true. My sons rooms are all at least 75% completed. The monster room is finished except for one piece of artwork. They ran out of the paint pen I need to finish it and two months later our adorable island still hasnt gotten new stock at the one store that sells them. The ninja room is amazing and I love it. I underestimated my sons eye for design and only painted 2 walls the bright yellow that he chose. Turns out its the worlds best yellow and so I need to go in and paint the other walls. Other than that it's outstanding. The orange and red room is a work in progress. We added orange sheets and orange curtains and a disco light and he seems happy so we really haven't put much effort into the finishing touches. I even hauled all the crap out of my 4 communal closets
And reorganized and began the prettification process. So yeah, things are going well. I included a few pics that I had on my phone for the ninja room, I will do proper posts at some point.

Finally we get to the subject at hand, catch up complete. I'm awesome because I accomplished no tasks today but instead lounged around with my husband and went out to lunch with him. Usually this sort of day would leave me feeling defeated but instead I chose to enjoy the fact that I got quality time with my husband and as a bonus I was able to be extra kind to my children since I wasn't fried from working. I could barely believe it myself but I got My twins to complete their work in under 30 minutes and still produce something of quality. When my oldest started his meltdown routine I was able to talk him down from his manic state and keep him focused. My youngest was still dealing with the messy room problem so we worked on it together and he finished all his work in about two and a half hours. Parenting success moments for me.

I know two and a half hours doesn't sound like success but it includes the room clean up and the crazy amounts of talking to himself that occur throughout the homework process. I included a few pictures of him because I couldn't stop smiling at how cute and small he looks sitting at his desk (his thinking hat was pretty entertaining too) one picture shows him counting on his fingers to figure out a math problem, it was so much fun to watch! But the best moment was when he decided to school me:

T: mommy can you guess what letter I'm on in the word bus? Is it first, second or third?

T: and I'm only going to give you one hint so listen very close.

T: it makes the uuuuuuhhhhh sound in bbbbbbbb, uuuuuuuhhhhh, ssssssssss.

B: is it the second letter?

T: mooooooommmmmeeeeeee! How did you guess? Since when did you learn how to sound out words?

again with the sideways! But look at his feet dangling!

So focused!

Tired of sitting I guess?

He's got mad finger counting skills!

I love him and his learning style :)

I'm livid!

As my adoring Facebook followers know, my sons and I have been reading the book "The Borrowers."

For the last two months we have read a few chapters each week. We've had nights where they beg and beg for the next chapter and morning drives to school where we all ponder and suggest what might happen in the next chapter. The characters in the book have felt like a part of our family.

This week we finally finished the book (it has quite the dramatic ending!) and I carefully read the reviews and inquired with friends about the movie that had just come out, "The Mysterious World of Arrietty" that was based on the book "The Borrowers."

Reviewers raved. It was beautiful and masterful. Families that had started reading the book or read the book when they were young noted how it was a great representation. My sister in Montana said it was slow moving. Overall it seemed worth our time and money to check it out. I even read the behind the scenes guide about how it was made, I was more than a little excited and yes my expectations were huge.

Today was the big day.

We spent the afternoon discussing the scenes we were most excited to see and my boys were giddy. This was their first experience of reading a book and then seeing it turned into a movie.

It was awful.

I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! (feel free to picture me jumping up and down screaming as I say this, that's how I felt when I thought it)

I spent the movie skulking lower and lower in my chair wishing for the monstrosity to be over. I muttered under my breath about my hatred and disdain. I was audibly shocked about how outrageously off the entire storyline was from the original. I cringed at the inconsistencies and I barely managed to stay awake.

1 hour and 35 minutes felt like at least 3 hours.

We left and I asked my boys what they thought. Each one responded, "good." I then said I hated it and asked what they liked. They couldnt think of anything. They kept pointing out how it was all so different. My five year old explained that it was hard to keep his eyes open. My 7 year olds just didnt understand why they didnt know the right names for the characters or the order the story was supposed to follow. As we talked they got more and more mad and I could tell they felt cheated.

As well they should.

This movie took the lively spirit and fascinating fairy tale that is the borrowers and turned it into a morose look at a young boys mortality and the fatality of a group like the borrowers. The energetic flow of the story was replaced with elevator music that was stuck on repeat and a lot of scenes with no talking.

In it's own way the movie had a few memorable moments. But it was nothing like the book. AT ALL.

To top it all off, the movie was obviously scratched and it looked like it was raining in every single scene of the movie. In the one scene where there was actual rain we couldnt see it due to our distorted view. My sons wanted to see this movie so much, and I was so sure that it would get better, that I didnt complain until afterwards. Apparently that was my mistake.

I waited 10 minutes until they could find the manager for me and explained that I feel they should post a notice if they are going to show a movie that is that badly damaged. It is a movie noted for cinematic beauty and japanese anime artwork and expected to win awards based on this. I'll never know since the movie I saw was just filled with rain.

The manager then explained to me that the movie came to them previewed and there was nothing he could do because Disney is the hardest company to get a reprint from (indicating he knew there was a problem).

I then reiterated that in the past I have known them to post signs noting if a film has a scratch etc... so that a film goer can make in informed decision on whether they want to spend their money on a film of lower quality.

He then explained to me that if people dont like a movie they usually walk out and that he didnt know it was scratched because he hadnt had any complaints (indicating he didnt know there was a problem).

I explained that this was why I was complaining so that he could fix it in case no one else had complained.

He then stared at me blankly.

I finally got tired of the staring contest and turned heel and left with my 3 sons in tow.

When we got to the car my oldest said, "you should have asked for your money back." He is sooooooooo right.

We all vented about how frustrating the whole situation was on the way home (meaning I ranted and raved and my boys agreed with me, possibly out of fear.) Once we got home my middle child said, "we should write a letter to disney in case they dont know that its written wrong and not really about the borrowers book."

So tomorrow that's what we're doing.

We'll be up early working on the art of the complaint letter and googling where to send it to. Then we might just go by the theatre to make sure they put up a sign warning other patrons of the damaged film.

If I dont see that sign I may go loco on whatever theatre employee I find.

I'm not sure why it matters so much, but it does. Thank you Queen Kaahumanu Theatres and Disney, you managed to ruin an awesome day. We'll get you back tomorrow (I am saying this out loud with my nastiest face possible.)

On a side note: Today was awesome, we spent the morning at a great choir practice singing disney songs that my sons were awesome at and then came home and sang some more and I started the most amazing book. Plus we had cinnamon rolls.

See? Awesome. Until "the movie" happened :(