Best Zombie Movie EVER!!!

For our date night tonight, we went and saw Warm Bodies. Oh. My. Goodness. Best zombie movie, EVER! It will be joining Lost Skeleton of Cadavra on our Halloween watch list.

Thanksgiving has come and gone...

...and I've been a slacker (at least as far as blogging goes) and didn't write anything on Thanksgiving about how grateful I am for everyone and everything. blah blah blah. Okay, so that's sounds just too snarky. I really am grateful for everyone in my life (or at least trying to be grateful for them) and I am truly grateful for everything Heavenly Father has given me. More than anyone else knows, I know that He blesses me every day, and I'm not sure why. Here are just a few of the things that show me Heavenly Father knows and loves me:

• Mr. Perfect
• Better relationships with the kids
• The rental dishwasher getting fixed without parts and not needing to be replaced
• Leading me to my keys/wallet/Bluetooth/phone/whatever-I've-misplaced-this-time (anyone who has watched me freak out over this stuff knows exactly what I'm talking about here)
• Great extended family on both sides. Huge kudos to the Merrill family, who love me and treat me amazingly. Bigger kudos to the Parker family, who didn't have a choice about me being in their family, but have elected to not kill me anyway.
• The ability to trip and not fall or die. Seriously, I am the world's clumsiest person.
• Near misses almost every time I get on the freeway (you'd think that my car was an invisible color instead of silver)
• Did I mention Mr. Perfect? Oh, I did, didn't I. Sorry, but he's so great that he gets two mentions.

I was also finally able to make Little Big Sis happy and get my turkey out of her freezer. We had Thanksgiving dinner with Mom & Dad M, and we supplied the bird. Crazy Old Bird stuffed and cooked it (delicious!).

Before filling our bellies, we called Lawyer-in-the-Works who wasn't able to come home for Thanksgiving (ah, the joys of being a first-year law student -- grrrr!). It was wonderful to talk to her, and she'll be home for three weeks for Christmas. Yay!!!

Game Boy was also on hand for dinner. Poor thing. He had two full Thanksgiving meals, but was a real trooper and ate with us like he hadn't just finished one with his mom's family.

After dinner, we went for a walk before dessert. And how cute is Little Artist in her borrowed coat? I know, right?

For dessert, I made an apple pie with Swiss cheese in the crust. It tasted great, but browned a little too much. Next time, must adjust baking time.

And we love this picture of Dad M in his chair. He's proof that rest is for the righteous.

Once the festivities were done, Game Boy, Mr. Perfect, and Most Happy Girl took in Wreck-It Ralph. Great flick. You can tell that Disney and Pixar are really starting to blend their studios. Even though it was released under the Disney label without the Pixar bouncing lamp, half of the production team is from Pixar, and it shows.

It was a very good day.

LOTR in 1:44 minutes (or right there abouts)

Thanks to Dizzy Dandelion for this amazingly fun video. Now I just need to find a video of Ann Russell doing Wagner's Ring Cycle in 20 minutes and post that.

The Hunger Games is a go

Saturday, Mr. Perfect and I took a couple of nephews to see The Hunger Games on the giant IMAX screen at Jordan Commons. It's always a concern when a movie is made based on a really good book. There's always the chance it won't live up to your imagination. And when the book comes first, it's always better than the movie.

This is the first time that Mr. Perfect has read the book first before seeing the movie. Actually, it probably would have been the first time Mr. Perfect had read the book after seeing a movie, if he'd done that instead.

I loved the movie. I thought they did a great job with the casting and the feel of the different places. Mr. Perfect noticed a few things missing and asked me if I've noticed that before in other movies. He's currently reading the third book, Mocking Jay, so he's really into the story right now, but he enjoyed the movie enough to see it again next weekend when Game Boy and Drama Queen can hopefully come with us.

I want to see this movie...NOW!

Taking a little time to talk about movies...

No, not ones we've gone to see lately (although, we do highly recommend the new Sherlock Holmes and latest Mission Impossible flicks). I mean home movies.

For Christmas, Mr. Perfect desperately wanted a really good table saw and compound miter saw. We found them on sale for an amazing price (Black Friday shopping at its best; there were only four people in line ahead of us at the Lowe's at 4:30 am, with the doors opening at 5:00). However, that left us with a little bit of a dilemma of what to give poor, neglected Most Happy Girl (yeah, right; so neglected). While perusing the Thanksgiving ads for Black Friday, we found the perfect gift for the girl who loves taking pictures and watching movies: a Panasonic fully-HD camcorder.

New Year's movie marathon, part II

For the New Year's movie marathon this year, Game Boy opted to come with us, and hence, enjoyed the fun of the helping to pick out the movies. Here are the ones we saw, in order of seeing, and how we felt about them:

Up first: War Horse (see this movie, though Mr. Perfect felt more consideration was given to cinematography than to character development)

Second: The Adventures of Tintin (fun and fast-paced; 3-1/2 stars out of 4 -- we didn't see it in 3D)

Lastly: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (united consensus on favorite of all three)

Painter Extraordinaire, Li'l Big Sis, and Genius Child #2 saw Sherlock Holmes with us. Fun, fun fun!

Day Twenty-eight

My favorite movie. Now I really have to think. I enjoy a lot of different movies for a lot of different reasons. I'm not always in the mood to watch a movie I love, but that doesn't mean I won't want to watch it later.

I do have a favorite mini-series: Little Dorrit. The new one with Matthew Macfadyen.  It's wonderful, but you need a good nine hours to devote to it.