This Is Us

  This holiday, as with most things this year, was different. We couldn’t go anywhere due to a kid in one of our kid’s classes getting COVID, and our kid having to be quarantined until the 11th. So we tried to make it a special one. We cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill, boiled corn, made bacon ranch pasta salad, had raspberry parfait and chips. We also bought everyone their very own little tub of ice cream. Everyone was so excited! While we ate our ice cream, we watched The One and Only Ivan It wasn’t our normal thing we do, but it was fun and we enjoyed our time together! Nick, Lydia, and Tyler has fun with the Lay’s chip bag...

  It’s been a very long time, but we did it! We had a date night away from home! Nicolas and I went to the movies (they just opened on Friday). The tickets were only $5 a piece and the snacks were discounted. We had to wear masks unless we were eating or drinking. We saw  Inception . Yes, it’s not a new movie. They were showing it for the 10th Anniversary. There wasn’t any other movie we wanted to see, but we wanted a date night. Plus we never saw it on the big screen, and it was great! When we picked our seats, they had every other row blocked off. We chose the top row right in the middle. Once we chose our seats, two seats on my side and two seats on Nick’s side were blocked out. We discussed how cool it would be to have the whole theater to ourselves... we walked inside and there wasn’t anyone there. We knew we were a little early and figured at least one other person would come. No one ever did. We had that whole theater to ourselves! It was great! I could laugh and jump w...

So we have been noticing that most of the movies coming out lately are rated R. Why is this? Because it's cool to listen to swearing, or watch actors pretend to be in love and make out, or see naked bodies, or watch someone have their head sliced open??? If it's not that then why are movie companies so insistent about putting things in their movies so they can get the rated R rating? What is this world coming to? It has been many years since we've watched a rated R movie. We have movie night at home, with the kids, and our options are slowly shrinking. We go to Target or ShopKo to see what movies have come out for us to buy so we can have movie night, and there are more rated R movies than G, PG, or PG-13. It is so awful! What happened to the good old movies that you could watch with the whole family? That made you laugh and feel good after you watched them? Well here are some: *Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief (A little violence, and a couple s...

A little while ago we took the kids to the drive in. We've never been and thought it would be fun. It was only $15.00 to get in and watch 2 movies ($7.00 for us adults, $1.00 for Brichette, and Xander was free), plus we could bring our own food and drinks. We first tried sitting in the back of the Durango with all of our pillows and blankets which worked out okay, but then we decided to ask Nick's parents if we could borrow their truck. That was so much better, we filled the back with our 5 body pillows, regular pillows, tons of blankets, and had lots of room for us to snuggle in (it was nice and soft). It was also a lot cooler, since we weren't surrounded by car and the air could move around us. We all enjoyed it so much (and so much cheaper) that we haven't been to the regular movie theaters since. Here are a couple pictures (none of us in the back of the Durango, the pictures were to dark):

On Friday we went to dinner at the New Ho Ho Gourmet restaurant. We love their food, and the kids actually do now. They don't have any kids menu's but they do have paper place mats, and luckily I had pens. Well Xander sees where Nick carries his pens (behind his ear), so Xander was trying to get his pen to stay behind his ear. I look over, and he is pulling the same face, has his hand the same way, and looks just like Nick. What do you think? Well, except for the messy ice cream mouth. LOL!!! Then Brichette started playing with the pen too, and Xander had to try what she was doing also. What silly kids. They are wearing their outfits that we bought them in Hawaii. After we ate we went to the dollar movies and saw Space Chimps. That is a really cute show, and the kids laughed through the whole movie... as did Nick and I. We highly recommend the movie.

So on Saturday, Nick and I went to see The Mummy 3. What we saw of it, it was really good... We missed the last 45 minutes. We had an appointment to get all of the Hechtle grand kids pictures taken, so we had to leave the movie early to get to Kiddie Kandids. We were a little late, and I'm pretty sure made everyone mad... but when are they not mad at me??? The pictures turned out cute, although the two oldest boys didn't want to smile, little stinkers! :) Then while we were waiting for the pictures to print, we went and ate. I asked Nick what he thought about going back to the theatre, telling them that we had just been there, but we had to leave the movie early and if we could just watch the last 45 minutes of it. He said "Yah, I don't think so." It would be worth a try right??? :) So anyway back to the movie... I am really bummed that Rachel Weisz isn't Evelyn in it. The actress who plays Evelyn (Maria Bello... Coyote Ugly and Flicka) is okay, bu...

We went to Raging Waters on Saturday with our friends; Page, Chevonne, Stephanie and her two kids. We got there early enough that we didn't have to wait in a long line for the tube rides. I took Brichette and Nick took Xander... they had so much fun. Brichette was squealing the whole way down, saying how much fun it was, and Xander was laughing. We would get to the bottom and have to run right back up and go again. It was hard to get them out to go eat lunch. Then we went in the wave pool. The first time we didn't get there soon enough so we were at the end of the waves, and they crashed on us so hard. We kept getting soaked from them hitting our tubes. Brichette and Xander didn't like it there, so once the waves had stopped we moved up to where the waves started, and that was so much better. You just rocked with them, and they liked that. They wanted to stay in there, but I had gotten really burned from sitting in the tube waiting for the waves to start. They are supposed ...