Look Familiar?

In answer to yesterday's question.....

'Terk' from the Tarzan movie back in 1999!

Notice that hair? Gianna's seriously does the exact same thing every day, especially in the morning right out of the crib. It makes me crack up and I wish you could all see it in person. We love our little monkey!

Here's my favorite scene from the movie:



Happy Wednesday!

Ready For The Voyage?

Our family cannot wait for the upcoming Narnia installment, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader! Arriving in theatres December 10th, it's only a couple weeks away!

Reed has been especially fond of Narnia since a very young age, Lily is in love with the movies (and perhaps some of those darling male actors) and I've grown to enjoy the Narnians as well.

I'm not sure if we'll catch it in the theatre, but I certainly hope we can. We've had to wait two years for this and have been counting it down, hate to miss it!

How about you, are you a Narnia fan and looking forward to the movie debut?

Movie Series Review

Last week at the library we stumbled upon a movie titled Secret Hideout that sparked some interest for Lily, so we decided to give it a try. We then found out that it was part of a children's series of five DVD's entitled The Sugar Creek Gang and quickly sought out more later in the week. We did find another one, Swamp Robber, but since our library didn't have the series shelved together we couldn't locate any more.

Upon further scouting and accidental stumbling we found two more episodes this week, Revival Villains and Teacher Trouble. Now we just need to locate The Great Canoe Fish to finish out the series.

Although we've viewed these movies out of order, we've still been able to piece together the whole story and enjoy them. At just a little over an hour a piece, they are easily viewed in their entirety in a sitting. I've even enjoyed them!

The series shows the highs and lows of the friendship of a group of kids, honesty, mishaps and some trouble and there's some mystery solving that the gang gets into as well. Lily's favorite characters were Circus (the only girl) and Bill (the fun-loving farm boy). She highly recommends the series for any of you that may have children that love mystery and are around the elementary school age.

Check out their website I linked above to view trailers or check if your local library has them available! I also just found out that there is a series of Sugar Creek Gang books (36 titles) available at Amazon. I might need to check those out for a certain little girl's upcoming birthday.

Teaser

If you are eagerly anticipating the new Narnia movie arriving in theatres this Christmas, you may enjoy this sneak peek!

We cannot wait for its release!

Faith Like Potatoes

We recently watched this movie through Netflix as a family. And we all really enjoyed it. But I must ask, what is with me and movies with accents recently? We struggled to understand large portions of this movie and ended up opting to get those subtitles working in a hurry! Of course, this also came in handy as some of the characters spoke in Zulu.

It seemed like a rather simple, straight-forward plot identifying a man's journey back to simple faith. In the beginning, we were stunned by the anger (and probably underlying sadness within)that the main character, Angus Buchan, exhibited.

We watched as the Buchan family, farmers, moved out of the conflict in Zambia to South Africa and struggled with their mere plot of land. They meet many challenges throughout and their faith is tested. This leads Angus to a deep conversion as his desires turn toward those of spirituality and faith and away from the wealth and prosperous farming he had tried to attain.

I enjoyed the characters and watching the beauty of the South African people. Many lessons to be learned, I'd say. I must admit, that the character of Simeon especially touched me. His timid and forbearing nature shined through. Acting or not, it was a believable character anyone would fall in love with.



Probably not my absolute favorite movie (am I that hard to please?), but an inspiring one for sure.

On A November Saturday

This family of four took a break from things that we 'should' be doing and decided to enjoy it together on a family outing.

* We surprised Jonah by recommending we make the hour drive to go see his much awaited Thomas movie in the theatre. Dare I say how excited he was? If you've interpreted anything here about my dear boy, you know that perhaps we should've named him Thomas instead.

Might I add that the movie, seriously, wasn't all that bad. Perfectly timed at 50 minutes and it included 4 'shorts' to equal one film. A new engine was introduced and more recently newer ones were included, along with the old favorites. The engines were also the newer version (we like to call them the "funny faces" version), which are the ones who talk and their mouths and eyes move. So much more enjoyable for us parents who are tired of the plain old ones since we've seen them OVER & OVER AGAIN.

And yes, there were plenty of little boys in their Thomas shirts with their parents and grandparents. Plenty of little laughs. Plenty of gasps from the adults when something went wrong. And plenty of shout outs from the crowd. Cute kids movie and for my HUGE Thomas fan, it was perfect. Even Lily tolerated it quite well.

I think it's gonna take awhile to get "Splish, Splash, Splosh. I'm gonna need a wash." out of my head though.

* While we were in that city, we visited the HUGE craft store there that I *love* so much. They just happened to be having their big Holiday Open House with 50% off sale. I had a 30 minute time limit in order to catch the movie, to which I'm sure hubby was most grateful. Found some simple items to add to my Christmas decor. That was thrilling for me!!

* After hearing about Jamie's visit to the new, nearest ALDI last week, I was tempted to give it a try. And well, we were in the right city so we gave it a try. Thanks to Jamie's failed trip, I was one step ahead and knew what to expect. Say, for example, the quarter that it costs in order to get your cart from the cart corral. Or the fact that you should bring in your own reusable bags if you have them. Another note of information if you haven't been there would be that they only take CASH & DEBIT cards. NO credit cards or checks. Good to know. Thankfully, our half-full cart did not exceed our cash on hand.

Kind of a different change of pace there with some definite differences from conventional grocery stores, but we did save a good chunk of change and we kinda liked it. We don't have conveniences like this type of store near us, so when we do our usual run for those items that last us awhile, it will probably be added to our list of places to stop along with Sam's Club.

* We used Lily's October Book It certificate at Pizza Hut and enjoyed our lunch out. But being a bit cautious around public places and especially more so this year, the overly crowded Hut did bother me just a bit. We'll have to take our preventive measures now that we're back home.


There you have it. Although this is not a typical Saturday for our little family, it is fun to have little adventures out like this one. It is nice to take advantage of our growing-up-too-fast children and be able to just GO somewhere. I just don't always remember that and see it that way.

New In Town

Over the weekend I watched the movie, New In Town, from Netflix. I'll admit, I am not a big movie watcher. I just have always felt that I've got better things to do and would rather not waste time watching a movie. That's just me. And, if I do sit down for a movie I want to really be into it and enjoy it. I'm glad I didn't wait for Reed to watch this movie with me. I don't think he'd like it.

I struggled with the plot. In that, there really wasn't one and it took half way through the movie to really feel like it was progressing somewhere.

The movie jacket says this:
'The weather isn't the only drastic change for high-paid consultant Lucy Hill when she's sent from her home base in South Beach, Florida, to a small Minnesota town to improve the productivity of a local manufacturing plant. The town's residents also take some getting used to, especially the ruggedly handsome union boss who's doing his darnedest to make sure that Lucy doesn't cut any jobs'

Literally, that is the entire plot line. Yes, it becomes a story of love and friendship and a change of heart too, but not really enough content for me to feel like I'd really need to watch this movie again. Maybe it's just me.

Uf-dah. It was also filled with A LOT of Midwest/Minnesotan stereotypes, with the main focus on our Minnesotan 'accent'. I'll admit that it did have a few really good one-liners that gave me a chuckle and were cute. But really, Hollywood, we don't REALLY talk like that. Right? (Or do we??)

While the Minnesotan humor was cute, it was repetitive after a few times. Sorry to say, this movie just wasn't for me.