The Adventures of Maddie - Movies Under the Stars Edition

We had quite an adventure on Friday night!

During the summer the city of Bellflower shows "Movies Under the Stars" every Friday night in a little open air plaza off of Bellflower Boulevard. Friday, was the first movie of the year - Grease. As Ed had band rehearsal, Maddie and I decided to meet Liz and Daniel at the movie. The plan was to walk down with the stroller, and have Liz drive us back home when the film was over. So we set out a little after 7, packed diaper bag in tow, and strolled on down to the plaza. I was feeling very proud of myself that we'd managed to both bathe, get dressed, and out of the house on an outing within a decent time frame. About halfway there I realized I'd forgotten her sweater, but never fear - Ed dropped it off on his way to band practice.

We got to the plaza, and it was packed. Probably about 300 people or so, all of Bellflower turned out it seemed! I got a hot dog from the hot dog guy (at some point I really should learn his name), and he was very happy to meet Maddie. Mads was super good, she only cried twice when she was hungry, the rest of the time she enjoyed snuggling under blankies and getting held by Liz and Daniel, and admired by random toddlers.

About halfway through Grease a horrible thought occurred to me. I had thought through what to put in the diaper bag, getting the stroller ready, digging up my sneakers, but it had only just hit me that we needed the CAR SEAT to put in Liz's car for our ride home.

About halfway through the movie it occurred to me that I had neglected to bring her car seat! We were so prepared except for the most important travel item! The car seat had been left in the living room, and it's base was still strapped into the backseat of my car. Ed had already gone to practice, so we had to figure out how to get us home.

My first plan (pay close attention, it's complicated) was that I would take Liz's car and drive home, park her car in Ed's space, get the car seat from the living room, hook it into my car where the base already was, drive back to the plaza, load us all up, drive back home, and Liz and Daniel would take their car and go home from there. Brilliant plan.

When I got home and ran into the house to get the seat, it suddenly hit me that my trunk is FULL of random junk and hasn't been cleaned out since I graduated in 2005. There was no way we could fit the stroller in the car with all of us in it! So I scrapped my original plan and grabbed the base from my car. I'd never installed it before, Ed usually does that, but we'd figure it out.

When I pulled back up to the Plaza Liz and Daniel were the only people there except a few volunteers cleaning up. We managed to get the car seat in, Maddie strapped in, Daniel situated next to her, but we could not get the stroller into the trunk of Liz's car! We took pretty much everything out of her trunk, and it still wouldn't fit! So we decided to leave it sticking out of the back along with her bottled water and other Sam's club purchases.

We finally get into the car, sweaty from our battle with the stroller, and we realize that we've left everything else - purses, sleeping bags, folding chairs - on the bench in front of the car! So, we had to pile back out of the car and shove everything into wherever it would fit - which was mostly on top of Daniel. I had a folding chair in the front with me, and Daniel's school project diorama on dinosaurs under my feet, so I rode home with my feet up on the dashboard. Luckily we all, including the diorama, made it home in one piece.

In the immortal words of William Shakespeare - "All's well that ends well.