FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT
In January of 2022, when Jack was halfway through Kindergarten and my husband was going through a really challenging time with his health, we started Friday Pizza & Movie Night. I share the full backstory later in this post, but now it is sweet to see that something that was started out of exhaustion and just wanting a mental break, has become one of the sweetest parts of our week.
The back story is that after school started back up from the holidays, I noticed that by Friday night my boys were exhausted from the week, they were whiney and irritable and Friday night usually ended in frustration and tears. I realized that they were just so tired from the routine of the week that they could not control their emotions and it was manifesting chaos.
I started thinking what we could do to help manage this chaos and remembered something from my childhood that has truly become one of my favorite memories. Every Friday night we went out to dinner as a family. This continued well into middle school, before Friday nights turned into Friday Night Lights at the football stadium.
My mom was a full time kindergarten teacher and now looking back, I realize that we probably went out to eat because she was exhausted and didn’t want to wash one more dish or think about organizing one more thing, and I don’t blame her, but to me, those Friday nights are some of my most cherished memories.
Now, to me, the idea of loading up 2 small children to go out to eat every Friday night sounds overwhelming and stressful, so I decided instead we would order pizza and do a movie night + picnic. We pull out the pillow mats, the boys snuggle up with blankets and have a picnic on the floor while we watch a movie. It’s simple but we are all together and it’s become our favorite part of the week!
We are very protective of this time each week and very rarely skip one. We say no to a lot of things on Friday nights because we know that the boys are only little for so long and soon enough they will be running off to their own Friday night plans. Once they are older, we will probably switch to a different night of the week, but for now I’m holding Friday nights close.
Note: I didn’t start keeping a record of movies we’ve watched until we had been doing this for a few months, however I will continue to update this list each week to give you a running list of ideas.
We are watching these in “timeline” order (according to Disney+) vs. when they were released, which is why they are not alphabetical. We also skipped several because of specific content in the movie. Use your best judgement for whether or not your kids are ready to watch these or not!
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