The movie Bolt and Even Almighty

The family and I were watching the movie “Evan Almighty” tonight and noticed that the chief of staff in for “Evan Baxter” could have been a real life version of “The Agent” in the movie  “Bolt“.  This dude looks the same and talks the same and everything, it was very obvious right off, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the “Bolt” character was modeled after the real actor in the movie “Evan Almighty”.  The actor who did the voice of “The Agent” in “Bolt” is named “Greg Germann“.  The actor who played in “Evan Almighty” is named “John Michael Higgins“.  Compare them side by side, and the resemblances are amazing!

Going on a trip to Jamaica!

My wife and I have been trying to make plans for our 10th annaversary for several weeks now.  Its been hard for us to really decide on anything for sure since we didn’t have our passports and have never gone anywhere outside the continental U.S.  But today we did it, we decided on a destination and made arrangements for our trip.  We will be going to Ochos Rios Jamaica to the Sandals Ochos Rios Grande All Inclusive Resort and Spa.  We went a little over budget for this trip, but there were a few things (as there always are) that we didn’t expect when planning the trip.  It turned out the flights were more expensive when you select reasonable flight times and then add on the trip insurance and woooops…  But oh well, its our 10th annaversary and we should splurge a little to celebrate. 

It did take quite some time to decide on a destination because we wanted to stay somewhere nice, but wasn’t unreasonably expensive.  Not just that but we actually want to get around and see the area and take some excursions.  Right now I’m thinking about taking the ATV safari and the canopy safari which is a rope walk through the tree tops of the jungle and they hint about some rope swinging which sounds like fun.  Throw in some time to relax at the pools and the beach, and there you have a nice little getaway.  We choose this particular resort due to a combination of factors such as price, room availability, reviews, resort features, local excursions, and more.  We will be sure to take lots of pictures and post reviews of the resort once we return.

The Don't song

I found this youtube video rather funny and enjoyed watching it.  Thought I’d pass it along to anyone reading my blog.  Its a silly song about the don’t of marriage.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-lv8745InI

Saw "The Dark Knight" last night

Last night after work, I met a friend at the food court in the mall.  After grabbing a quick bite to eat, we headed over to the AMC Veterans 24 theatre to watch the 6:50 showing of “The Dark Knight”.  We made it to the theatre just in time and it was nice that it wasn’t really packed. 

The movie itself was pretty good for a batman movie, it had good characters; the story was interesting, etc.  It was (as most reviewers have said) very dark, with a lot of things that would have been quite gory and something you might expect to see in a gory horror movie, except to get the PG-13 rating, they don’t actually show you whats being done, they either change camera angles or don’t directly show the gory details.  It wasn’t that there was a lot of gory stuff going on, but they implied what they were doing and left the rest to your immagination. 

As a batman fan, I enjoyed the movie.  There were lots of cool scenes in it and some good action and effects.  Overall it was good, but one thing really gets to me.  I don’t know what people are thinking, or what kind of parent would do this, but parents are taking their young kids to see this movie!  I don’t understand why anyone would do that, as this is a dark movie, and there are bad thing being done to people by the joker and other “bad guys” in the film.  At one point a little boy has a gun pointed at his head and both him and his family believe he is about to be shot.  Its just not a good movie for younger kids.  When I was in the theatre last night, there was a man there with his two younger boys.  One looked like he could have been 10–12, but the other one coudln’t have been more than 7 or 8.  The younger boy was scared several times during the movie, and I could see him curling up in his chair turning around and crying. 

I realize that not everyone thinks the same way, and often times common sense is often now the “uncommon sense”, but really, there is no excuse for this, movie reviews and ratings and the internet resources are all there for parents to check out before letting their kids see movies like this.  I rank this up there as a form of child neglect, honestly…  Parental neglegance or the just plan old “I don’t care” mentality about stuff like this is not good for any kid.  And you better believe that during that movie, I felt like coming up behind that guy and in true batman style pulling him up out of his seat and then making him take a good hard look at his crying son sitting a few chairs over. 

Oh and one more thing, I thought it was kind of interesting that they protrayed some batman immitators in the movie.  I wonder if this idea came from reality in that with most of the last few batman movies there have been fans who have dressed up like batman and prowled the streets of some city pretending to be batman.  I like what they did with that in the movie, even though the joker killed several of the immitators…  I think they were trying to send a message to batman immitators out there.

Weekend followup

We just had a great weekend! Saturday with Michael’s birthday party and Sunday enjoying the awesome weather outside in the back yard together and chatting with neighbors, it was just a great weekend. I love this time of year with the cooler temperatures and clear skies. It is so relaxing to sit in my back yard, with the “preservation” area behind us, nothing but the sounds of nature to listen to (and the kids playing of course).

Liz and I even got to work on her allspiffedup website a little. We are testing out some things and trying to make it more interactive and visually appealing. We should have a new site up and running in a week or so. I really enjoy doing web work with Liz, we both enjoy it, and although I’m the more technical person who makes things happen, she is understanding of how things work in general and is very good with graphics and we end up having a good time together doing this sort of thing.

P.S. Michael still talks about his moon, he randomly remembers he has it, and keeps saying “moon” over and over and tells everyone about it. Its really cute!

New website for the family

Its been a really long time since we have updated our website.  To be honest, its not very functional.  There are links that don’t go anywhere, pages with no content, and people usually only come to visit our site for the pictures.  So I decided to re-do the site, making it more of a blog/portal for our family.  Soon there will be family updates listed on the main page, along with links to our blogs, and picture gallery.  Soon you will find our site to be much more user friendly and contain the information you want as a visitor anyway.  We just need some new graphics and to finalize a theme to use.

updated picture gallery

I spent some time on friday night and uploaded some new pictures to our picture gallery. Sadly it had been four months since the last update… Go to the picture gallery!

The song of a parent

This is an amazing video, it so accurately captures the feelings of a parent with small children. I can’t say enough things about how much I like this video. You’ll just have to watch it for yourself. Video courtesy of YouTube:

Catching up

Its been a busy two weeks and I have not posted much to my blog lately. So here is an update starting with the weekend we went to Orlando…

On Saturday October 6th we drove up to Orlando and stayed at the Hilton resort at Disney. My aunt and uncle put us up at the hotel to spend some time with them while they were in town for a conference. We got to the hotel sometime around 4:30 or so. We grabbed some dominos pizza for dinner and Liz’s sister Christina came over to visit for a while. My aunt and uncle arrived later that night and we visited for a while until after midnight.

Sunday we got up and went out to breakfast at a waffle house. Once we were done eating we headed back to the hotel to get ready to go to Downtown Disney. On the way back to the hotel, we saw an IHOP which we would have all preferred, but didn’t know was right there. We got back to the room and got ourselves ready to go and walked over to the Downtown Disney marketplace. We walked around a little and let the kids play at the lego store and checked out some neat things they had setup on the street.

The kids rode a train around a little, and we got some cute pictures of that. They also rode a merry-go-round which they always love. Then we headed over ot the Rain Forrest cafe for lunch. That place is really neat, and has a unique atmosphere and awesome decorations and effects. Every 30 minutes there is a thunderstorm and the animals go wild and they flash lights, etc. Its a lot of fun, the staff are friendly and the food was good.

We walked around a little more and ultimately headed back to the hotel to go swimming. The kids and uncle David beat us all down to the pool, and when I got there, they were already in the water. I tested the water with my toe and found it a little cold for my liking, so I took advantage of the cool breeze and occasional sun to get a little rest on a lounge chair. I had just started to doze while the kids were playing in the pool, when I was awaken by the sensation of rain drop on my face. We got our stuff together and herded the kids under an umbrella and got ourselves ready to go back into the hotel. We got back to the room and changes and visited a little more, and by this time it was after 5pm, so we decided to get ready to go soon. I think we left close to 6 or so, and the rain actually stopped which was good, because traffic would have been slow if it had kept raining. We were home before 7 and got to crash for a bit before getting all the kids off to bed.

Then this past weekend, the 13th and 14th, we actually had a nice productive time at home. Liz and I got a good amount of yard work done and trimmed bushes and cleaned up, which was good. Sunday we spent the bulk of the afternoon at Bonnie Brae park in Temple Terrace, hanging out with friends and letting our kids play. It was a very nice evening and the weather was perfect! The kids played on the playground, and the adults visited and played with their kids. It was very relaxing.

Sunday morning I had a problem with my new phone (the tilt). I set my phone to vibrate in the morning and later it went off so I pulled it out of the holster to check and the screen was all washed out and practically un-usable. I tried to call AT&T about it, but the office I needed to talk to was closed until Monday. So Monday I called and they are sending me a replacement, which I should have by tomorrow (Wednesday). I hope this is not a bad batch of phones and just a strange fluke with the individual unit I received.

Stressful Sunday

We had a bit of a crazy time this past sunday. Liz slammed the Miata car door on Abby’s fingers, so we were taking care of her, and during this whole ordeal, Michael went into the kitchen and opened the oven door and burned his little finter tips. Neither of the incidents were bad, they were fine in a few minutes, but it was enough to make the stress levels rise. Plus I hate seeing my “babies” hurting.