We’ve told Milly for a few days now that she’d be going to see the new Disney movie, Frozen, after church today.  She’s been super excited about it ever since she saw a trailer for it.  When we went to Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago, we got her the book of the story.  It’s a book with nothing but words (well, it’s got a few color pictures in the middle of it) and we haven’t finished it yet, but she’d really enjoyed it.

So today we let her wear the Frozen t-shirt she picked out at Old Navy last week and apparently she invited her buddy Callie to come along with her while they were in Grow Zone together.  Callie’s dad, Greg, was the second person behind me in line, so Milly and I waited for them so the girls could walk together.  Callie told Greg Milly asked if she could go and told him to say yes.  For his part, Greg wasn’t feeling great and also had to take care of Brynn since their mom, Allison, was on keys at all the services at church today, so I told him if it was okay with them, we could take Callie with us.  So that’s what we did.

We went to Atlanta Bread first where the girls both had (and shared each other’s) muffins then walked to the theater.  Actually, we ran some.  Callie’s a much faster runner than Milly though.  I need to get that girl running more.  I need to get myself running more, for that matter.

Amanda took the girls in while I got some popcorn to split.  They enjoyed all of the trailers except for one.  There’s a live action Sleeping Beauty coming out called Maleficent.  Now, I think Maleficent is one of the coolest bad guys there is (Disney-wise, at least), so Angelina Jolie as Maleficent is pretty badass to me.  Milly, however, has been afraid of her since the first time or two she watched Sleeping Beauty.  Milly said that it was not a good movie for kids to watch.  For some reason I was cracking up over that.

I digress.

The movie was good and the girls were very excited.  During a few of the songs Milly grabbed my hand or arm and snuggled up to me.  I felt the music was more like a musical than most recent Disney movies with music in them.  The story had a nice little twist to the princess true love trope.

After the movie, walking back to the car, the girls took turns pretending to be Elsa and Anna, the princesses from the movie, and the Elsa would accidentally freeze the Anna using her freeze power.  It almost had me in tears thinking back to how my friends and I would do the same thing, like when DJ Tunberg and I watched Young Guns and decided which outlaws we’d be.  (My favorite was Chavez.)

We dropped Callie off then headed home, though neither wanted to part yet.  Milly later helped me put up the outside Christmas lights, which she approved of by saying, “They’re Christmas perfect!”

Funny thing.  We’ve got these little plastic clips that hold the lights up on the roof and we’ve had them since we moved into the house, which was 2007, and I just today realized the best way to attach the strings of lights to them.  I mean, they’ve got several clips and hooks and such, but only today did I think about slipping them into the back part of the clip instead of using the pincers part.

Amanda had the idea to use one leftover strand of lights to decorate Milly’s room.  She’s got a replacement night light for the Christmas season, I suppose.  The room is really bright though.  Milly calls them her Christmas Monkey Light.  Her regular nightlight, you see, has a monkey on it, so she calls it her Monkey Light.  The strand of lights in her room has no monkeys on it whatsoever.

We watched Elf as a family tonight.  If this year is anything like the last few, it’ll be seen several more times before Christmas.  In fact, I think Milly did already watch it once this year.

Speaking of Elf, Milly’s Elf on a Shelf, Buddy (named after Buddy in Elf) appeared today.  He was at the end of the railing on the stairs and apparently decorated the railing with lights too.  How nice of him.

Amanda and I watched The Walking Dead’s mid-season finale tonight, and it was a doozy.  Don’t read any further if you haven’t seen it yet.

The Governor took Michonne and Herschel hostage and convinced his new tribe of people to attack the prison.  Herschel got decapitated when Rick sounded like he was winning people over with a peaceful solution.  Michonne escaped.  A tank and cars ruined the prison’s fence and the tank shot up the buildings (which seems pretty stupid if you’re trying to take the place over).  Lots of other people got shot, including most of the Governor’s people.  Little Asskicker’s car seat was later found empty and bloody, and since that’s the event where she died in the comic book, I’m pretty sure that means she’s gone.  The Governor got impaled by Michonne then shot by his girlfriend, whose daughter was bitten by a walker.

Let’s talk about that for a second.  The chick and her kid were left in a “safe” place near a river.  That’s fine for one side of things, but what about the side without the river?  So the little girl, who was attacked while playing last week, is about 25 yards away playing in some mudslide near trees and such, and you don’t think to stay right next to her?  I don’t know what her mom was thinking.  She brought her to the Governor at the outset of the battle though, and he put a bullet in the little girl’s head.  I think the girlfriend killed him because he took them out of safety and into this madness where people were being killed and she lost her daughter, who I think he really did care for.

Anyway, it was an epic episode and didn’t leave me irritated  like most half-season finales do.  I hate that trend, by the way.

Zach Dotsey