Now that we have our newborn and toddler, more than ever I want to make sure my husband and I have alone time together to do things we enjoy and did pre-babies. It was hard enough with one, but I can already see that if we aren’t intentional about taking time to be together, we can easily see months go by of zero date nights. 

Since my mom is the one that helps us with the girls, I’ve done a little switch up on the date night thing and instead we have some date afternoons planned. This is easier on my mom because by planning our outings in the afternoon, this ensures at least one of the girls will be napping at some point (Celeste) and that gives my mom a little relief. 

This past Monday we made plans to see a matinee movie and we ended up choosing McFarland, USA. And talk about switch ups and funny mishaps …

Yes a part of me briefly thought, maybe we should use that time to catch up on sleep, especially because that night we hadn’t gotten much rest. But no! We need time together to do fun things and enjoy each other’s company. 

As we side hugged and walked toward the theater and then switched to holding hands I felt so thankful that we had this time because I know many parents want to have it but don’t get it because they may not have the support system. 

So we get to the counter and let the girl know our selection and then proceed to the guy that checks our movie stubs and tells us theater 3. It’s 11:15am at this point and the movie is set to start playing at 11:10am. I love previews so I can’t wait to settle into our seats and enjoy. 

Have you noticed how many commercials are now played before a movie starts? Well we are sitting there and I notice commercial after commercial as well as previews of tv shows. 15 minutes of this and the movie still hasn’t started. My husband and I look at each other and comment that maybe because of the time slot they play so many commercials because of the target audience? No idea. But I’m bummed because I think, have they replaced movie previews with commercials if you watch a late morning movie now? That sucks. 

So then after 15 minutes of this the theater darkens and previews start to come on. Wow! So after 15 min of commercials we are still getting previews? Nearly 40 minutes after the 11:10am stated show time start, the movie finally comes on. I am still surprised and trying to figure this out.

As the movie starts the screen fills with a scene of some like dessert with loud helicopter noise and the screen shows something about it being 1997. Hmmm, I thought I read McFarland was based in 1987 or so, ok.



Then within seconds things begin to get really weird – I’m giggling now as I remember. Because on the giant screen there’s a scene of like the dessert with a ton of background noise and I’m thinking what the heck does this have to do with a running team? And my husband and I look at each other and in the meantime there’s soldiers dressed in black and I guess they just invaded this place and caught some middle eastern type looking fella that they’ve now tied to a chair to get information. Wtf?! 

Then all of a sudden the guy sitting tied to the chair gets shot!! I seriously think, ok maybe Kevin Costner (he’s the one that plays the coach) was in some traumatic army thing that left him scarred and that led him to want a quiet life in a small town? I don’t know. I’m so confused! We’re both confused and as my husband pulls out the movie stubs and I suddenly see Colin Firth, I know that this can not be the right movie. 

That’s right folks, we sat for 40 minutes in the wrong theater!! I was pretty PO, my husband thankfully was calm, which is great because that helps me not to get further annoyed and eventually calm down. 

It turns out that the gal gave us tickets for the 11:30am showing of Kingsmen! We didn’t even think to check our stubs when she gave them to us, so when the guy took our stubs to let us in, he guided us to the theater room based on the ticket, while we think we’re going into McFarland theater. And no, there is no sign of the movie in front of each room, there’s just numbers. 

The next showing of McFarland wasn’t until 1:20pm, thankfully we had nowhere else to go and my mom was okay with staying the extra time with the girls. 

In the end, the mess up ended up being a blessing because we went to Barnes and Noble to pass the time until the movie started. My husband and I found a book called Daughters in Danger which we sat down to read together (we bought it) and we ended up having a really good talk about life experiences that were brought up by the different topics in the book. It was a really special connection time for us. 

And yes, we did get to watch the movie. Our next outing is this weekend. We have tickets to watch American Ballet Theater: The Sleeping Beauty. Can’t wait!!