Dinner and a Movie

Last night Chris and I went out to celebrate his upcoming 32nd birthday. Nana came over to watch the girls and we decided to grab some dinner and go see a movie. Chris had decided he wanted to go to a local Greek restaurant called Acropolis and see Paul Blart, Mall Cop. We began to look at movie times and I reminded Chris we had a few gift cards for Regal Cinemas. So, we got online to find the closest theater, which was in Citurs Park Mall out past the airport. Our plans were set and when we realized we had $75 in gift cards to Regal we decided to invite our friends Misi and Josh to come along and treat them to the movie.

With the kids all taken care of we took off for our evening. We got down to Ybor City where the restaurant is and realized the Gasparilla Parade had been that day. There were lots of people with tons of beads all over down town. Chris and Josh dropped Misi and I off in front of the restaurant while they parked the car so we wouldn’t be late for our 6:00 reservation. As we walked up to the restaurant we saw white paper napkins all over the place. Misi and I looked at each other and then she asked the host why there were napkins everywhere. The host looked at us and said it’s for the “Hoopa!” We sat down and ordered our meals. We were treated to some great live Greek music and a dance by the servers in which they threw napkins all over the place yelling “Hoopa!” The food was great and we were stuffed.

We headed off to Citrus Park Mall using the GPS in Chris’s cell phone. It took about 45 minutes as we were lead down all kinds of crazy roads. As we parked the car Chris announced we would be spending all $75 because we weren’t making a repeat trip to Citrus Park for a movie. We got in line to get our tickets. The kid behind the counter asked if any of us were students to which Chris replied, “No, but if you want to give us a discount we won’t complain!” We purchased our 4 tickets for $34, thanks to the student discount we were given.

Misi and I left the boys at the concession stand, while we made a pit stop at the restrooms and went to get seats in the theater. It seemed like forever before the boys arrived in the theater and when they did Misi and I both started laughing. They were loaded down with snacks and drinks which included: a bottle of water, a medium soda (that must have held at least 2 liters of soda), a large soda (see medium soda description and thing bigger), a medium popcorn (which was twice the size of my head), 2 boxes of Dibs ice cream, 2 bags of Twizzlers, 1 bag of sour watermelons, and 1 box of Reeses pieces. Then they announced the still hadn’t spent all the money on the gift cards they just gave the rest of it to the guy behind them in line. Misi commented that a shopping spree at a movie concession stand was like a dream come true for Josh.

The lights dimmed the movie started and we laughed hard. We snacked on a multitude of things and thoroughly enjoyed our evening. Our evening can be summed up with the following statement, compliments of Paul Blart:

“You’re like a great meal. You make me feel stuffed without having to unbutton my pants.”