Willow's First Movie in the Theater!!

Willow has been opposed to antagonists in movies since she was little. It's been hard to find movies without parts that are scary for her. You would think that Rudolph, Cinderella, and Frosty would be safe, but until recently she would even ask me to skip past the parts in Cinderella with Lucifer the cat. When we moved into our house this fall, we were sad to leave some friends from Kim & Chad's neighborhood that Willow had enjoyed playing with in the culdisac daily. They mentioned the idea of having her over for a Movie Night but my first thought was of fear of what normal kids' movie they would show that would absolutely terrify her. We started doing a Family Movie Night on Friday nights shortly after we moved and would rent a DVD from the public library. I thought Willow would enjoy watching some of the princess movies since she knew all of their names but really didn't know anything about their story. We started with Little Mermaid because I remember it being one of my favorites as a child. Wow! Nothing would've prepared us for the rollercoaster ride of emotions that watching that would entail!! She truly sided with Ariel throughout the movie and literally screamed at King Triton when he shattered all of Ariel's human treasures. We watched the whole movie in about 45 minutes (no scenes with the eels/Ursula were viewed) but in the end she said that she liked it (we were exhausted!!). She did really well with Lion King over Christmas break and, more recently, with Aladdin. She's learned about the Disney movie "Frozen" through a friend at school and could tell me the basics: "There are two sisters, Elsa and Anna. One girl has one braid and the other has two braids. One girl has magical powers and the other doesn't." I'd heard good things from other moms online and asked trusted Morgan for the low-down on whether Willow could handle it =) She warned us about a scary preview and a very brief encounter with a snow-monster-type character so I thought we'd be pretty safe. Willow was more than ecstatic to find out that Chris and I were taking her because Nana and Grandpa offered to stay home with Owen. 1:00 couldn't come soon enough! She did a GREAT job and really enjoyed the theater experience AND the movie. Of course she had a million questions after she processed the whole movie on the drive home, and now she wants to "play Frozen" all the time. I know she can't wait to see her friend at school on Monday so she can tell her she finally saw it!

For scrapbook purposes I thought it would be fun to remember the price of a matinee in 2014. Nana and Grandpa let us use their coupon for a free small popcorn, otherwise that would've been $6.25. I'm curious what the price will be when Willow looks back at this as an adult!