Coffee Break–Volume 75

A weekly list of things accomplished, enjoyed, learned, tried and remembered.

1. Physical Education–E-Learning Style. Doing P.E. online has not been very effective in helping my boys get their wiggles out, so this past week I sent them outside for the lulls in between their classes. I’m pretty sure trampoline pillow fights are not an approved elective, but maybe it should be. What are they going to do? Send my boys back to school AT their school? No. Please. Don’t.

2. Holiday Blasphemy. I really wasn’t sure I was going to share what we did this weekend, but then I saw that many of you on social media had done the same thing. So, now that I have herd acceptance, I can tell you–we did it too. We decorated for Christmas. At first I felt like I was doing something totally naughty by not waiting until after Thanksgiving, but I tell you what–I don’t regret it. Not one bit. We played Christmas music and the boys had a blast helping us get it done this year–they have developed their own “method” for decorating their tree downstairs. It even snowed for just a few minutes while we were decorating–I took that as a nod from heaven that God was also ready for our home to be ready for Christmas. Judging by the huge smiles we all have had seeing our home donned in it’s Christmas best–I think a little break with tradition this year is just what is needed.

3. What we watched. Super Rockstar and I are in a “show hole”. We have run out of TV series to binge watch for now and so we have been watching A LOT of movies lately.

The first one was Gemini Man. I remember seeing the trailer WAY back when it came out and thinking “meh”. It’s so much better than I thought it would be. Will Smith does a great job and I highly recommend it. I think it’s probably ok for tween/ teens, but we were glad we didn’t let our boys watch it. I think they would have found it WAY too intense.

One movie we started and stopped was Downhill. It’s listed as a comedy and it has Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus–how could it go wrong? We only made it 30 minutes. It was not a comedy–at least not to me. It felt depressing and very, very stressful. Maybe it got better–but, I will never know. I wish actors that we know and love to do comedy would stay in their lane and not try to become serious drama actors. It’s not ok.

We also watched Get On Up. Chadwick Boseman plays James Brown and he did a great job–I wish he hadn’t been taken from us so soon. It’s a pretty decent movie–the story jumps around a lot, but does a good job of portraying James Brown’s life. I guess I didn’t realize that he spoke of himself in 3rd person a lot. Now, thanks to Super Rockstar’s impersonations–we get the treat of re-enactments every day. “Super Rockstar don’t get coffee! Coffee gets Super Rockstar! Hey!” And then there’s usually some sort of fancy footwork to go with it. Anyway. Yes, I recommend the movie–not for kiddos though.

And finally, we watched Young Sherlock Holmes. I love this movie so much. Well, I love anything Sherlock Holmes–but this one is just a great take on his beginnings. I think the last time we watched it was when it was rental at Blockbuster. We originally wanted to watch this with the boys, but when we showed them the trailer they said “No thanks”. Movie trailers in the 80’s were pretty lame. I think it’s good for tween/teen, but definitely not for younger kids. There are some pretty frightening images and story content that would scare littles.

With the boys we enjoyed watching the first two X-Men movies. My older son, Morgan has been begging us to let them watch them for a while, so we finally relented. They’re both really good and I highly recommend them. To be honest, as far as violence and language–they are very mild. There is one character–Mystique–who’s “outfit” (if you want to call it that) is basically a skin body suit that leaves nothing to the imagination. I think these movies are too intense for younger kids, but any tweens and teens that enjoy super hero action movies will love them.