July 1, 2008
Back when I was a kid, I remember regularly biking over to our local two-screen theater and catching the latest and greatest movies on hot summer days. Then when my lovely and talented wife was pregnant with Son #1, we spent almost every summer Saturday catching a matinee to stay out of the heat. Since then, we’ve fallen out of the habit of seeing movies in the theater.
Part of this has been due to the high cost of movies, but mainly it’s been due to the continual presence of young kids running around our house. Now that our youngest has reached an age where he can sit still a bit more than in the past, we’ve started going to movies again. What follows is a ranked* list of movies that we’ve seen this summer. These rankings reflect my own not-so-humble opinion, whereas the star ratings are taken from IMDB.
1. Iron Man (8.2 stars)
2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (7.1 stars)
3. Kung Fu Panda (8.1 stars)
4. Speed Racer (6.6 stars)
5. WALL-E (9.2 stars)
A few notes: Son #1 largely agrees with these rankings, though he puts Indiana Jones ahead of Iron Man. Kung Fu Panda was very fun, and loved by all. Speed Racer was particularly well-loved by Son #2 (eight years old) and Son #3 (six years old). Pretty much all of us found WALL-E to be a bit, well… Boring. It was interesting to a point and I wanted to love it, but it ended up being little more than one of those Pixar shorts that they run before the main attraction, except that it seemed to run on forever.
Next up… We’re looking forward to seeing both Get Smart and Hancock in the near future.
May 28, 2008
It’s that time of year again! Time to start thinking about cheap summer entertainment for you and your kids. With that in mind, I pulled together a list of free (or really cheap) summer movie theater promos. In case you’re not aware, theaters often have special summer promos where they show G or PG films on weekday mornings for free, or nearly so.
While we’re very happy with our Blockbuster Total Access subscription, nothing beats an occasional trip to an actual movie theater. What follows is my best attempt at compiling a list of these offers.
If your favorite theater isn’t listed, you might want to call them and ask if they offer anything like this. I tried to catch most of the major chains, but I’m sure I missed some - if so, feel free to let me know and I’ll update it. Also, some chains might not have posted details of their promotions yet, as it’s still a bit early. With that said, here we go… [more]
November 30, 2007
October 11, 2007
My favorite sitcoms (in alphabetical order):
Cheers
Everybody Loves Raymond
Frasier
Friends
Home Improvement
How I Met Your Mother
Just Shoot Me
Malcolm in the Middle
Scrubs
Seinfeld
Spin City
Still Standing
That 70’s Show
Two and a Half Men
Yes, Dear
August 17, 2007
Looking for a fun and (potentially) cheap late summer/early fall diversion? Then look no further than your local State or County Fair! I just ran across a website that has compiled a huge list of links to fairs from across the country. While I’m sure they’ve missed a few, it’s really quite impressive. [more]
July 30, 2007
Want some free building blocks? Then hop on over to the K’Nex website and sign up to receive a free sample of K’NEX bricks.
From the signup page:
CALLING ALL KIDS AGES 5 - 12!
Receive a FREE Sample with Genuine K’NEX Bricks. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Limited to one per household while supplies last. Send us the name of the last brick building set you received, including sets from LEGO ®, MEGA BLOKS ® or any other brick building system, and we’ll send you a free K’NEX sample with Genuine K’NEX Bricks. Enter now… start by filling out the form below!
While they’re not Legos, they’re free. And free is good.
If you’re a die-hard Lego fan and won’t settle for anything less than the real thing, don’t forget that you can snag cheap Legos in bulk on eBay.
[Via: Mallory by way of Want Not]
July 21, 2007
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows just arrived.
The boys are very excited.
(And so are we…)
‘Nuff said.
July 19, 2007
Woohoo! We just received word that our copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is being prepared for shipping from Amazon.com. We should have it in our hot little hands sometime on Saturday. Sure, we could get it a bit earlier by running out to the store at midnight Friday night or first thing Saturday morning, but we’re more than happy to wait a bit to have it delivered to our doorstep - and to get a $5 Amazon gift certificate to go along with it.
July 10, 2007
Well, we have a new favorite TV show in our house… It’s called Man vs. Wild, and it airs on Discovery. In short, this show chronicles the exploits of Bear Grylls, who is a mountaineer, adventurer, and former member of the British Special Air Service.
In the show, Grylls intentionally “strands himself in popular wilderness destinations where tourists often find themselves lost or in danger. Once there he finds his way back to civilization, demonstrating local survival techniques along the way.” Travelling with a two-man camera crew that is under strict instructions not to help him unless he is in a “fatal situation,” Grylls eats raw meat and live fish, fends off hypothermia, and drinks his own urine to survive.
As disgusting as this all sounds, it’s really a fascinating show, and the boys have already learned a lot from it. Sure, it’s not terribly practical knowledge, but still… We now have our DVR set up catch all the episodes that we’ve missed.
Quick update on the Harry Potter front… If you pre-order Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from Amazon.com, you’ll get a $5 gift certificate to be used anytime during August. It’s only good on purchases of $20 or more, but you have to hit the $25 mark for free shipping anyway. If you foresee a use for this gift certificate sometime during August (perhaps a bit of back to school spending?), this brings the net price down to $12.99 (list price is $34.99 and Amazon is selling it for $17.99).
