Insert “some clever title about the best laid plans” here

Well, the guests are here, and we’re having fun. There are cousins for John, Jenna and Cole to play with. The other girls? Not so much, but they are doing fine.

Last week I won 8 passes to the Harry Potter Premier for Monday night. (Which was no small feat, by the way, as I had to win TWO sets of four tickets. Then Ryan graciously drove down to the radio station to pick them up for me.) Perfect! I could take Cole, his cousins, my sister-in-law, Megan, a friend, me and Ryan. Since it’s a pretty popular movie (duh), we were going to try to make it there 2 hours early to make sure we could get a seat. There’s a silly thing about these movie premiers–they give out more tickets than they actually have seats, since they want a full theater.

In order to be downtown by 5, I had to ask everyone to make their own sandwiches while I went to American Fork to turn in the kids’ artwork for the Steel Days Art contest at 3. After standing out in the hot sun filling out forms and attaching entry forms to 8 pieces of artwork, I hurried home to pack up the lunches and go and get the babysitter. She was originally scheduled for 4:30, but I called and asked if I could get her at 4, so we could leave a bit earlier. While I was gone, I asked Cole to help John use the potty. About 10 minutes later, I came back with the babysitter. Megan’s friend was here, and everyone was just kind of mulling around. Cole was in the bathroom with John, who was still crying and didn’t want to use the potty. Oh. He’s already stinky, that’s why. Which means I have to change him, while simultaneously telling the kids to please go out to the car and remove the car seats so that we can all fit in there. After getting John taken care of, I give some instructions to the babysitter, tell the kids to go and get in the car, and gather up our food and snacks and water bottles. Giving out last shout for “EVERYBODY GET IN THE CAR!” I go out and make sure everyone has a water bottle. I did not, however, ask if everyone had shoes. Silly me.

So, we made the drive to the gateway and I was so impressed with our time. We got a couple of “where are you, now?” calls from Ryan’s brother, who was already up there and had picked up his tickets. Then I got a call from Ryan (on his brother’s phone) asking where we were. “Almost there,” I said, still proud of us for actually getting 7 people there by 5:00. “Well, I’ve already gotten my ticket, but you’d better hurry because they say the tickets are almost gone,” he told me. Like telling me to hurry is going to do any good. Does he think I can fly there? I’m doing my best.

So we pulled into the underground parking and told the kids to all get ready so we could make a dash for it once we got there. “I’ve got to find my shoes,” says Cole. We all told him to look on the floor, and just make sure he had his shoes so we could run once we found a parking spot. “I can’t find them!” he says, getting a little bit upset. Well, they have to be there, right? Who gets into the car without their shoes?! Apparently Cole does. We found a spot, grabbed our stuff, and hustled (shoes or no shoes) to the movie theater. It was about 5:10, I think. No tickets. Ryan is there telling us that had we made it there 8 – 10 minutes earlier, we might have gotten tickets. The employee told us to stick around, they would see if there was any way they could get us in, but the tickets were all gone.

I’m ashamed to admit, but I got really snappy and irritated about then when Ryan started asking me when did we leave, and his brother called on my cell again. When he noticed that Cole didn’t have any shoes and started asking him about that, Cole started to cry. He thought that the reason we didn’t make it in time was because of his shoes. That really wasn’t the problem, just an added bonus to make the story better. As we waited, I cooled off and apologized to Ryan for snapping at him, and made sure Cole understood that we weren’t mad about the shoes. We played cards and ate our sandwiches, and Ryan took Cole shopping to find some new shoes. Just in case they wouldn’t let him in to the theater without them–you know, those “no shirt, no shoes, etc” rules?–I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t take him to find new shoes, since there’s no way I would have paid those kind of Gateway prices and he would continue to be shoeless. They came back with new size 8 vans. Size EIGHT! I have been buying him size 6. hmmmm.

At 6:45, they told us that there were absolutely NO extra seats, and none of us were going to get in. We gave Ryan’s one ticket to a lady who was there alone and SO wanted to see the movie, since it wouldn’t make any sense for just one of use to go see it. Then we tried to figure out what to do. The kids had been so good, and I had promised them a movie. The next showing of any movie we would have wanted to see didn’t start for another hour, and frankly we were tired of sitting on the floor in the lobby of the movie theater.

We decided to go to the Planetarium. Entrance is free, and there were some cool things to see before the IMAX movie. Since I didn’t want to sit through an IMAX movie (after all I’d been through, do I just want to get sick from a stupid movie? I don’t think so), and my sister-in-law didn’t really want to see it, either, we just paid for the kids to go. Then we walked down and did some window shopping, ending up in the Barnes and Noble reading to pass the 45 minutes.

Although it wasn’t a total disaster of an evening, I still feel as if I let everyone down. I promised them a cool movie premier, and couldn’t deliver. I dragged them all the way downtown in the 100 degree heat just to sit for two hours in the lobby of a crowded theater. How much fun is that?