Stupid Kid Movies

Sometimes as a mother you are asked to watch stupid movies with your kids.  Sometimes you even have to pay money to sit in a theater and watch them.  I sometimes dread it when the boys see a movie preview for a movie like "The Smurfs" and say things like "let's get tickets to the midnight show for that one!"  (This literally happened, In the theater in a very LOUD voice.)

My first experience with this was "Sponge-Bob Square Pants the Movie".  It was Thanksgiving day and it is a Sorensen family tradition to go see a movie after dinner.  We all drive to the local theater (this time we were in Cedar City) and then break up into groups to see whatever movie we like.  This particular year some of the littles, 2 of mine and at least one maybe 2 of Tonja's kids wanted to see Sponge Bob.  Chris and I volunteered to be adult chaperones and went with them.  I like the occasional Sponge Bob episode.  I find the writing quite clever and the show rarely if ever goes over that line of tastefulness when it comes to bathroom jokes.  The Movie however was mind numbingly stupid, and it was quite possibly the longest  80 min of my life, no I take that back that award goes to the movie Happy Feet which made me want to jump from the top row of seats and run screaming for my sanity.  Ok so here is a list of the worst movies I have had to sit through with the boys.

1- Happy Feet (It was bad, so very bad.  Bad acting, bad animation, bad story and truely awful music.  I saw a poster for Happy Feet 2 and nearly puked)

2- Sponge Bob, The Movie ( the only saving grace was 10 min or so of Sponge Bob and Patrick riding on a firm David Hasselhoff posterior as he swam through the ocean like the wind up scuba diver my brother Buster had as a bathtub toy.)

3-Gnomeo and Juliette (I slept through 30 min of this one or it may have taken the cake)

4-Cats and Dogs (this one wasn't so bad, but the boys weren't really into it so they were climbing all over and talking, then the lady in front of us yelled at me and told me I should have left my kids at home, because when you go to a movie like Cats and dogs you expect a mature audience)

5-Yogi Bear ( this movie was saved a higher spot on this list by a great performances by Dan Akroyd and Justin Timberlake who were spot on in there Yogi and Boo-Boos, and by TJ Miller.  I just can't bring myself to hate anything with TJ in it.)

Runners up:
Tales of Desperaux
Hotel for Dogs
Marmaduke
Alvin and the Chipmunks

On the other side of this coin are the rare treasures.  I am not talking Toy Story here.  I am talking about movies your kids whan to see, but leave you groaning "please no not another one!", but then turn out to be quite good.  This weekend we went to see Mr Popper's Penguins.  This is one of my favorite books from childhood.  We just finished reading it in homeschool, and the boys wanted to see it.  It did not look good.  Surprisingly it was.

It was completely different from the book, but they did a good job of modernizing the story.  Jim Carey was funny, but not too goofy, and the penguins weren't too cartoony.  We all had a fun time.  I would watch it again.  In a nutshell I was pleasantly surprised.  So here is my list of pleasant surprises:

1-Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (we saw this in 3D and trust me it was the best 3D movie I have ever seen, better than Avatar.  Seriously it was.  They used every 3D gimmik and it worked.  There is nothing like giant 3D hamburgers falling at your face.)

2-Mr Popper's Penguins

3-Rango (Story a little lacking here, but it was funny and cleverly animated, and Johnny Depp's voice didn't overtake the Rango character. ) 

4-Ice Age (this one had a pretty good story, the 3 Men and a little Lady equation with ice age animals.  I hate it though when they cast famous actors in cartoons whose iconic voices overshadow the animated characters.  I want to forget it is John Goodman and Billy Crystal and have them become Sully and Mike (Monsters INC)) 

5-Night at the Museum/ Spy Kids(the original) (These 2 movies tie for the 5th spot.  Both are original stories, make use of some A-list stars, but looked terrible in previews.

Runners Up

Shrek ( this one was a GREAT movie, but I was torn as to weather it looked good or not in pre-views.  So because I was a little excited to see it myself I can't include it in the other list)

Rio (Again with the voices!)

Kung FU Panda(again I had hopes this would be good)

ELF (now a classic at our house)

CARS (I did not think this one looked good and flat out refused to see the 2nd one with them or I am sure it would have been on the first list)

Now that my boys are getting older I am sure my days of stupid kid movies are almost over.  Last month we sent the boys to see Cars 2 while Chris and I went to another movie.  That was fun.  I am sad though that this means there will be no hidden gems either, bummer.

One month of homeschool

Our first month of homeschool is done. It feels like a grand accomplishment, but in reality it isn't all that. At first I was worried that it would be too difficult. Now I am worried it is too easy. Only time will tell.

So far our mornings have been filled with school work. We start with spelling, then Math, Reading and Science. Once a week we do History, Art, Grammar, Library and a field trip, one per day. We are busy from 8 am until 12. We listen to an audio book while we eat lunch, then they write in their journals. After that we are done for the day. Fridays are more relaxed than other days. We catch up on anything we may have missed, take tests and have our field trip. They take breaks as they need them, usually choosing to go outside and play for 15 min or so.

Erik is so relaxed and happy, I wish I would have done this years ago with him. He gets his work done quickly and without complaint. He does get overwhelmed with certain assignments, but if that happens I break it up into pieces for him, and he is fine. He loves our set schedule for each day and is good at keeping me on task. He will remind me "it's 10:00 mom you need to help me with math". He gets 100% in his spelling tests each week and last week he took a math test and got a perfect score on that as well. We have been working on reading fluently. I am getting the feeling he processes written words differently than I do. It seems like he processes the whole line of words at a time instead of reading each word individually. His comprehension is very good, but his oral reading sounds choppy. Sometimes it seems like he is giving a synopsis of the line instead of reading it back to you. I know that oral fluency is how they test reading ability at this level, so I feel like it is important he practice reading out loud fluently. We go sentence by sentence making sure to say each word, in the right order. It can be frustrating for both of us, but he is improving. The Singapore Math we are using is great. It is perfect for Erik. I love that we work on a concept until he has it 100% then we add to it a little. Riley's class is transitioning to Singapore math as well, so I am doubly glad We are using this method.

Tian loves homeschool, but I don't love it for him. He is a little more difficult to motivate, and struggles getting his work done some days. So far each week he has had one day where he just breaks down and refuses to do his work. It comes down to writing. He hates to do it and thinks I make him write too many things. It has been a while since I have had a first grader, so it is a possibility that I am pushing him too hard, but he is capable of doing the work, he just doesn't want to sometimes. He is reading and spelling quite well now and he really enjoys that he can sit down with an easy reader book on his own now. My biggest hang up with him is that he is lonely. He likes spending time with Erik each day, but I can tell that he misses being with other kids his age. there are no kids his age in our complex, so to get him playtime, I have to arrange play dates with kids in our ward. With 2 callings and home schooling each day I have not had much time to set those up, but I need to be better. If an opportunity comes up for him to attend the neighborhood school, I will put him back in. I hate the idea of putting him back in the "Everyday Math" program, but I am sure that like my other boys he will succeed in math despite a mediocre math program.

I miss my alone time. I am trying to arrange my life so that I can get up at 5 or 6am and have that time before the chaos of the day gets started, but I haven't made it yet. More than anything I just want to be able to go to the grocery store without kids and on a day when everyone else isn't there too. The 2 boys are a little unreliable alone together. Erik is not mature enough to keep himself and Tian out of trouble. Chris is here most of the day, but is sleeping so not much help. I am hoping as time goes on I will find ways to work around these small issues.

The Trouble With Bunnies

This week my life has been overwhelmed with bunnies. I have endured plagues of flies, frogs and mice in previous residences, so by comparison, bunnies seem unthreatening. It being spring and our local Thumper's being "twitterpated" we have steadily watched the rabbit population grow. The adults, (pictured here just outside my sliding glass door) are pretty cute. The fluffy babies with their big eyes and ridiculous ears are adorable.

Chewie has a two fold fascination with the rabbits. He both wants to study them and hunt them. As I said before it is spring and the rabbits are twitterpated. Chewie being the dispassionate scientist he is attentively watched and then retold his observations when a pair of rabbits completed their mating ritual right outside our door. Last week he checked a book out on cottontails, so he was able to not only give me the details on what he observed, but also the gestation period, the length of time the mother would be required to tend her little ones before they could get back to being "twitterpated" again. I have been a little nervous as to how to have "the talk" with him. I am unsure how much he will understand and be able to relate to. I see now that we just need to approach this from an anthropological standpoint, or maybe I will just get him a book.

When he is not studying the rabbits for the betterment of science, he is trying to catch one so we can eat it. They just finished a unit in their Colorado history class on mountain men. Chewie has decided this is the ideal way of life. One solitary man against the wilderness whose only goal is survival. To help him out on his lifelong goal to be a modern day Jeremiah Johnson he has decided he needs hunting skills. When I flat out denied him buying a gun, he started to get creative trying to catch them with his hands, a rope and even attempting to train our cat (who is terrified of the rabbits by the way) to attack and then bring the rabbit back to him. He sat out on our tiny patio with Chester (the cat) petting him and giving him a pep talk by saying "remember you are a predator, rabbits are your prey" Chester remains unconvinced.

Riley found an infant rabbit next to our car yesterday. It was about the size of a mouse, blind and mostly hairless. His tender heart could not stand to see it left out alone, and he wanted to adopt it. I convinced him to put it back near it's den, and that the mother would come back to take care of it. It continued to climb out of it's den all afternoon. He would go out every 10-15 min to check on it and had to put it back in. He cried and cried and begged me to let him bring it inside. Finally we googled it and I found an article that convinced him that the mother would return at sunset to feed and look after her babies. That wild rabbits do fine on their own and do not need human help ( there are only 5 billion of them in our complex alone). This morning he went out to check on it on his way to the bus stop. It was dead. It is at times like this that I wish there was an emergency happy pill for depression. I was able to get him mentally sound enough to get on the bus and head to school, and I hope there he will have enough things to occupy his brain so he doesn't obsess about it and get really depressed.

Mr T has been driving me up the wall this week. He is like a 2 yr old constantly getting into trouble. He is bored and needs something to do. I am beginning to suspect he is responsible for the bunnies in the garage. Friday I went to grab something out of the freezer in the garage, and found three baby bunnies hopping around in the garage. Cute fluffy hoppy bunnies the size of rats, not blind helpless ones. I wondered how they got in there, opened the garage a crack to let them out and went on my way. Well yesterday it happened again. Again I opened the garage to let them out, but this time I said "how do these bunnies keep getting into the garage!"

MrT came running downstairs and said "why do you keep letting them out!", but then he clammed up and wouldn't admit to putting them in there. It would not surprise me that while Chewie was slowly plotting to teach the cat to hunt for him, Mr T learned how to herd them into the garage for his own amusement.

A lady at the store asked me the other day what it was like to have 3 boys. I told her "never a dull moment"