Family Time

As I mentioned in a previous post in June, the kids have been playing a game called Smash Up almost daily. Anthony plays when he wasn't at work. Patrick, Eric, and Alex play the most. Natalie plays some of the time. They finally got me to play a couple of weeks ago, after giving me those big puppy dog eyes, and saying, "Please, Mama!".

I've played three times total--I even won one of the games. It's a great game and has really great re-playability, but I overthink it and that confuses me, so most of the time I'm content to watch the rest of them play. Alex usually has to help me sort it out. I can totally see why Alex and Anthony are great at it, because their minds are analytical that way, but I'm also pleased to see Eric starting to think that way too. He gets some help from his brothers, but he has won games before. He amazes me with how intelligent he seems to be, even at seven years old. Of course I'm a little biased...

Eric also exudes personality. This is a picture of him yesterday, just after he put on the 3D glasses for watching the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. He put his thumb up on his own--no one told him too. Yesterday also, after tasting some lime sherbet at Brindle's Ice Cream, he put this thumb up to show that he liked it and that he wanted to get the lime sherbet. He cracks me up.

The whole family went to see Guardians of the Galaxy yesterday at the Rialto Theatre, where Anthony worked this summer. He had pre-arranged it with the management, and got us all in for free, as long as the movie was not going to sell out. We went to the 11 am showing, which happened to be the 3D version. We didn't originally care about the 3D, but the first non-3D showing was at 12 noon, and we wanted to go earlier. An additional plus to seeing the 11 am show was that since the 3D version is usually more expensive, at $9.50 a person, and the morning showings are less attended anyway, we figured it would be highly unlikely that the movie would sell out.

We all had a really great time. The movie was very entertaining. My family likes action movies anyway, but this one also had a lot of humor that everyone in the family could understand. The 3D feature did add a little something to some of the scenes, but seeing it without the 3D would have also been very enjoyable.

We didn't end up buying any snacks, so this movie was super-cheap for our family of six. The boys had gotten up shortly before we left, and the rest of us ate a big breakfast of pound cake waffles with chocolate chips, and turkey bacon. The kids did all go to Whataburger after we got home though. Patrick wanted to get through his list of things to do before their road trip, and I wanted to get through the leftovers in our refrigerator.

We all went to church Saturday evening and went out to dinner at El Mirasol. This was Anthony's last meal in San Antonio before going back to school, so he tends to always choose El Mirasol. Tomorrow I'll post a little about the road trip.