Life Update: Part 2
Back from Chicago! It was cold, windy and rainy so LA is the best place to come home too.
It seemed like everyone in the world was talking about the new Marvel movie “Avengers: End Game”. I hadn’t seen any of the Marvel movies, I didn’t know much about the comics either. Jeremy was a fan as but he had only watched a handful of the movies. We decided we would watch them all before going see End Game. I’m sure we could have watched a YouTube video that would catch us up in 20 minutes but whats the fun in that? Now, there are two ways you can watch these movies, Release Order or Chronological order.
Release order is obviously the order that the movies were released but this isn’t actually the best way to watch. The cool thing about this franchise is all 22 movies make one big story, everything plays into each other. Watching in this order was a great way to hold my attention. I have a bad habit of falling asleep during movies but I stayed awake through all of these, even the ones I didn’t expect to like.
We used this Reddit forum as a guide for watching. There are a ton of spinoff shows that play a role in the overall story but we didn’t go that far, we stuck with the movies. We didn’t follow this guide to a T. We watched the first few a little out of order. Captain Marvel is supposed to be the second movie but that wasn’t rentable yet so we watched that one right before End Game, which felt a little weird but it still worked. I really enjoyed all of the movies, I wasn’t expecting to like them all but I was really invested in the story and the characters are all so fun. The actors did a great job and its fun to follow the same actor for so many movies.
The First phase contains Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Avengers. This is the story building phase, you learn about each one individually and how they became superheroes.
The Second phase contains Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Iron Man, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. I really liked the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, they were fun, little Groot is one of my favorites characters.
The Third phase contains Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Spiderman: Homecoming, Doctor Strange, Thor: Ragnarok, Ant-Man & Wasp and Avengers: Infinity War. This was the phase I thought I would like the least, they all seemed random and I was excited to see End Game so I wanted to push through these but this phase was probably my favorite. Paul Rudd as a superhero is so funny to me but he did a great job as Ant-Man. Thor: Ragnarok was my favorite of the Thor movies. Infinity War was very good and ends with a huge cliffhanger so watching that one and then going straight into End Game is perfect.
We went to TCL Chinese Theatre and watched End Game in IMAX. After renovations in September 2013, the TCL Chinese Theatre became the first, and currently only, IMAX theatre in Hollywood, California. This is also the third largest commercial movie screen in North America, it was huge. The tickets were pretty expensive so not something we’ll do often but a cool experience. We’ve lived in LA for four years and this was the second time we’ve seen movie in theaters so I really wanted to check this one out. The theater itself is smaller than you would imagine but very cool to think of all the stars that have sat in those seats over the years.
The end of May I had the opportunity to go home to Kentucky to see family and friends. I hadn’t been home in over a year so I was due a trip for sure.
The trip started out in the best way, Charlotte picked me up from the airport around 6am. I always take the red eye home. I hate loosing the three hours when flying from the west to the east coast so I would rather do that in the air. Char and I went for breakfast at Frisch’s, if you live in the southern Ohio/northern Kentucky area you know exactly what Frisch’s is, if you live anywhere else, you probably don’t. Frisch’s has a really good breakfast buffet so if you stumble into this area and find one, its worth it to check it out. Waffle House, Bob Evans and Cracker Barrel were also requests I had for breakfast but never made it too.
I spent most of my time with Jeremy’s family, it was our niece’s third birthday. We had dinner as a big family like we usually do a couple of times. I was able to take Haper shopping so she could buy whatever she wanted for her birthday. She is growing up so fast, it was fun to watch her decide what she wanted and what she didn’t. I’m grateful to be close to my in-law’s, they’re wonderful and its always great to spend time with them.
I was also able to see some friends. Always great seeing my trio sisters, Tara and Carrie. Seeing your best friend become a Mom is crazy but awesome. It’s like she made a whole other version of herself that I’m able to get to know now. He is the cutest little boy and so full of love. Most of my other friends have all become Mom’s as well which is crazy for me but great for them! It’s interesting how different our lives have become but how little has changed in our friendships, even with distance and time.
That pretty much brings us to the present. We’re less then 6 months from my 32nd birthday. I find it insane that I will be 32 this year. I am now older than my mom was when she had me. I really don’t feel 32, I feel more like 25 or 26, I think I have LA to thank for that. Once we moved here, it was almost as if time stopped but in the best way. We’re just living our lives and enjoying every second, we have very little stress and I am grateful for that.
The past year has been a lot of growth and I plan to continue that. I did a lot of work internally and I feel really good about myself inside. I guess I should finally consider myself a “grown up” so I want to focus on things that make me feel more grown up. I big part of that is being comfortable in your own skin. Feeling comfortable in your own skin means a lot of things but to me it means loving who you are and if there is something you don’t like about yourself, change it. No one is going to love you and as much as you love yourself so you have be that person cheering you on all the time.
This summer is going to be the summer of health, beauty and finding comfort in my own skin! There are 22 year olds out there getting botox, fillers, facials, eat better and have personal trainers so the struggle is real…here I am a 31 year old newb but hey, ya gotta start somewhere.