The Shea’s Performing Arts Center in Downtown Buffalo hosts a family film series through out the year. They play family-friendly movies about once a month, tickets are free, and seats are first come/first serve. It’s a nice way to get out of the house and have some fun on the weekend.
Earlier this month dad came with us when we went to go see Hotel Transylvania. It was a great afternoon!
A panoramic picture of the stage from the balcony level. I love going to Shea’s. It was built in 1925 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s a beautiful theater.
Typically we sit in the first row of balcony so that we’re looking straight at the screen (rather than looking up or looking down).
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Doors open an hour in advance of the show and they have someone play a Wurlitzer organ to entertain the crowd:
http://youtu.be/JOe0MOXdsbI
The next movie showing at Shea’s is The Lorax on November 3rd!
Our cat, Jellybean, is generally pretty afraid of the boys. He’s been terrified of Ian since Ian came home from the hospital despite Ian’s lack of interest in him. For some strange reason he’s is less afraid of Matthew despite Matthew’s tendency to chase him around the house, pull his tail, and poke him in the ears. Overall, he disapears during the day when the boys are up and comes out of hiding after the boys are in bed.
Usually he sits on Mike while we watch TV but sometimes he hangs out with me, looks out the living room window, or falls asleep on the rug in front of the TV.
Sometimes he even falls asleep like this:
Weirdo. LOL
(Please ignore the terrible quality of these pictures. I was using my cellphone in a dark theater. By the way, the movie hadn’t started.)
There are tons of movie theaters in the Buffalo area and we tend to go to one of two Regal Cinemas. The theaters are nicer and one of them is only a few years old. There is an AMC theater super close to our house that we typically didn’t frequent. While it is much more convenient, the theater was old, outdated, and the seats were less comfortable. (Apparently we’re snobs. LOL)
The theater near our house just went through a massive renovation and replaced all of their seat with leather recliners. We decided to take the boys to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 and check it out.
Seating capacity in the theater is definitely more limited than a regular theater so this will be something we have to plan ahead on. I bought tickets in advance online earlier that day because you have to select your seats as if you were going to see a concert or a sporting event (you are assigned a row/seat number). When we arrived to pick up our tickets, there were only 3 single seats left for our screen and they were having to turn away families left and right. Since they renovated, we’ve noticed the theater’s parking lot is always packed so I don’t think this was a reflection of the movie (family/kids movie) or the weather (cold and rainy). I think they’re selling out frequently.
Our overall impression was very good. I definitely think we’ll be seeing more movies at this theater. We’ll just have to be sure to buy our tickets in advance so that we don’t get turned away at the ticket counter.
I’ve been traveling for work quite a bit this October, working tons of hours, and being spending a lot of time in Cleveland. For some reason, Cleveland’s suburbs don’t appear to have many coffee shops. As a result, I’ve spent more time in Starbucks this month than I have in the last 5 years.
I’m thinking about getting into the coffee shop business. Every time I’d go to the Starbucks near my hotel, there’d be a line 15-20 people deep. I feel like there is an untapped market just waiting for Tim Hortons to take over. 😉
(Please note, I’m soon going to be running out of bloggable content. Does this even count as bloggable content? Probably not. LOL)
A few weeks ago, we took the boys apple picking at a new-to-us farm: Blackman Homestead Farms. It was a pretty no-nonsense apple picking experience (which Mike and I liked) but it was packed and the apples were kind of picked over (which we did not like). We still managed to come home with more apples than we knew what to do with. 3 weeks later, we are JUST finishing them up and that’s with giving about a third of them away to our families! LOL
Before heading to the farm, we stopped at Wendy’s for a quick lunch.
Matthew got a kids meal that came with this Donkey get-up. You wouldn’t believe the laughter after I showed him this picture. I wish I had it on video. LOL
Ready to pick!
All of the apples were out of reach so Mike had to lift the boys up to reach them.
Another family nearby gave us their ladder and we all took turns getting on and picking apples. Well, Ian got on and quickly got down. He didn’t like being up there. LOL
Ian took these next two. This one isn’t the most flattering shot but he was pretty excited about taking pictures. 🙂
Soon we had 600 lbs of applies. 😉
We picked these up while we were at the farm. I can’t wait to try them all! Yum!
