Summer movies & Visiting a Buddhist center

We tried out the summer kids movies for the very first time and we had a blast! We have a newly renovated movie theater and I love the new comfortable seats. The seats don't fold up, so that was great for the kids but we ended up getting booster seats for them anyway so they could see over the top of the seats in front of us. James insisted on a green one because "green is my very favorite color". :) We also had to turn around and go back to the house before we left our neighborhood because James forgot his stuffed animals and he said, "But elephant and doggie really wanted to come!"

 The tickets came with a drink and popcorn for everyone, so we were all set! Rett looked a little toooo comfortable. He definitely watches more tv and eats more snacks like this than James did at that age. One of the perks of having an older sibling!

The movie was really cute and I had never seen it before, so it was actually fun to watch. Rett was done about halfway through the movie, so my mom and I took turns walking him around the hallways until the movie was over. I don't think it would work for us to go again if I had to bring both the boys by myself, but we might try again towards the end of summer. 

I noticed that this movie theater has special recliner seats at the front of the room that have footrests that come out and the back of the seat leans back. Quite a few moms were in the know and had brought blankets for their kids and they were all snuggled up. It looked so comfortable! My mom and I went later in the week to see Inside Out, and we snagged a few of those seats in the front. It was the most comfortable I have ever been in a movie theater! I definitely see more movie-going in my future :)

One of the local mom blogs that I follow posted about an interesting Buddhist center close to us in the middle of Mims. She said that there is a large statue garden and that they encourage visitors to come and check it out, so one morning we did!

First you walk through this path and pass a large bell. The sign says to ring it softly three times and then say a prayer to find peace and compassion. It got rung, but I can't say that it was rung softly :)

Then the path goes by what looked like a meditation center and a few buildings. The sign said "private" and "no visitors", so we didn't disturb them. After that it leads you to the beginning of the statue garden. It was so striking to see so many large statues all in one place!

A lot of the benches and other stone structures had words like "kindness" or "peace" carved on them along with different sayings. I really liked this one:

To show you hall tall this one is, you can see James' head barely peeking up at the bottom.

We sat down in the shade so I could take a picture. It lasted about half a second :)