Popcorn and a Movie Friday

This has been a looong week for me. I've spent every moment of my days TRYING to find some time for work. My to-do list kept growing longer and longer and instead of accomplishing anything, all my time ended up going to toddler-wrangling as Henry seemed to know just the right times to test my nerves and patience. See this week's previous post, Little F---er, if you'd like a detailed understanding of just how on edge I became with my work/life balance this week.

Oddly, a lot of my stress this week had to do with photography-related things I have yet to finish -- but my favorite way to relieve stress is to take photos. I don't claim to be the kind of person who makes sense so, on Friday, to calm myself down from all the climbing expeditions Henry has taken this week, I decided to photograph the day! Funnily enough, we ended up with a movie-and-popcorn-themed Friday! Yay for cohesive story-telling! :)

First things first - I love to photograph Charlie's classroom. I started doing this last year as a way to make a special photo book as the teacher's end of year gift. It became my favorite pet project - popping into the classroom randomly to photograph the children during lessons. This year, Charlie has a wonderful teacher who has agreed to let me in the classroom to do this project again. Today, the children had their first popcorn party for good behavior. They earn a piece of "popcorn" for the chalkboard bowl every time a student is respectful or responsible and also for overall class behavior. Once their popcorn bowl is full - they get a party on Friday with a movie! So cute, right?


Henry loves going to his brother's classroom! He gets lots of attention from the big kids and can usually find plenty of things to entertain himself!

After a viewing of Magic Schoolbus, the kids got to play a math game using a deck of cards to help learn how to say numbers that have a millions place (have I mentioned how amazing Charlie's teacher is??).


Afterschool, I treated the boys to a movie as Charlie's reward for getting stars on his "no talking" chart everyday this week at school. This was Henry's FIRST movie theater experience. Knowing Henry, it could really only go one of two ways -- he'd either love it or hate it so much that the screaming would force us to leave. I planned as best I could to make sure he'd love it. Junk food usually wins Henry over so we went to the grocery store to pick out candy and popped lots of popcorn to sneak into the theater. (I have no issue buying their wardrobe from MiniBoden and Crewcuts but I just cannot bring myself to spend $4 on a box of candy... I realize I am a walking oxymoron, stressing heavily on the "moron" part).



We saw Hotel Transylvania which was a really cute movie and held Henry's attention for almost the whole flick. It was less funny than I was hoping but more sentimental and sweet than I expected, too. Andy Samburg's voice got on my nerves and Adam Sandler's Dracula accent didn't hold in all parts -- but I have a feeling kids are not very critical about these sorts of things. Steve Buscemi's werewolf and Kevin James' Frankenstein more than made up for whoever cast David Spade. How does that guy keep getting hired? Anyway, there were a few parts that I thought might be too scary for Henry but he didn't seem to mind them at all. He liked how the seats in the theater went up and down so he spent a lot of time climbing in and out of his seat when he got a bit bored with the movie. He also really liked switching out his popcorn for m&m's and then back to popcorn again.

Overall, Charlie loved the movie - totally age appropriate for him - and Henry seemed to get along alright which means we will finally get to all go see movies together.