New Year's Eve at the Schoolhouse

The kitchen is a mess. The dishwasher is full of clean dishes but the sink and counter are littered with dirty ones. There's a small table in the family room covered with coffee cups, a wine glass, and plates with pumpkin pie crumbs.  Pillows are scattered on the floor between the couch and the television.

The remains of a wild New Year's Eve party?

Yes!  My little family spent yesterday and evening watching two of the three movies in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  We'll watch the third movie today. 

If you knew us, you'd know how wild a party that was.

We like movies.  We'd like to watch more than we do.  But it's so hard to fit a movie in to our day or evening.  On a typical evening we're sitting down to relax about an hour before everyone should be getting ready for bed.   So we will content ourselves with watching a 40- or 50-minute tv show, or we'll plan to watch a movie over two nights.  For some reason, even though we can sit for two or more hours in a movie theater without getting up, when we watch a movie at home we rarely can go an hour without someone needing to get up: to get more water, coffee, or something to eat; to use the bathroom; to get the barking dog into the house.  

So when we started talking about watching the Lord of the Rings again after seeing The Hobbit, I wondered how long would it take us to watch 10+ (12?) hours of movie. At our rate, it could take over a week!  But the adults conferred and we decided to surprise and thrill the children by announcing the New Year's LotR Film Fest:  all three movies over two days.   We began about 1:00 Monday afternoon, and wrapped up our day just before midnight.

No, we didn't make it through all three films. We didn't even attempt that. We took breaks for a couple of dog walks, some room cleanup, a little laundry, and dinner after completing The Fellowship of the Ring.  We started The Two Towers around 7:30 and planned to watch half of it. (Some of us didn't feel the need or desire to stay up till midnight.)  But though that is not a movie I truly enjoy, even I had to admit it:  there's not a good place to stop.  If you've seen it, and disagree, tell me where you'd take an overnight intermission.  In the middle of Helm's Deep?  During the Ent walk?  I think not. 

This morning everyone is still sleeping.  As always, I'm the first one up. I'm tired, and feel a little sluggish from the lack of activity yesterday.  This morning we'll clean up the debris from last night, restart the dishwasher, take the dog for a good long walk, and sit back down again.  I hope to finish before dinner, so we can have a calm and early night. 

I'm glad it won't be such a long day of movie-watching.  I'm happy that we're doing this, but I wouldn't want to do it too often.  I hope my kids feel the same way.

Wild parties like this shouldn't happen too often.

How do you spend New Year's Eve and Day?