The Toy Story Family: Take 3 (on ice)

On Wednesday night, we packed our still-recovering-from-the-death-flu selves up and headed to Toy Story 3 on Ice. We are die-hard Toy Story fans.

When I say “we,” I especially mean me. The original Toy Story came out when I was in high school. I’m not some animated movie obsessed person, but Toy Story had me from the minute the little green men ventured downstairs at Andy’s birthday party.

My entire family went to see the original Toy Story in 1995: my parents, my younger brother and me. I was 15, so you’d think I might have fancied myself too cool for family movies, but I did not. I died and went to toy heaven. I actually started collecting random Toy Story mini toys.

In November of 1999, Toy Story 2 was released. Ed and I had only been dating for a month. I was so stoked about the movie and was going to go with friends, but Ed took me. I’m surprised he didn’t end that whole dating thing right then and there. It’s probably not normal for a 19-year-old to get so excited about a children’s movie. I had no idea that I’d be writing this blog post, married to him with two kids, over 12 years later.

But he didn’t dump me. Instead, when Toy Story on Ice came to Phoenix several months later, he took me as a surprise. We lived in Tucson at the time and he drove me up to Phoenix for a kids’ ice skating show. I loved it.

Oh yeah, that’s us. Twelve years ago. I was 19 and he was 27. We waited in line for a photo, then bought the laminated version. It entertains the heck out of Mattix and Molley.

(Let’s not talk about my short, brown hair. That was the only period of time since I was 16 that my hair was brown. Or that short. It followed an unfortunate incident wherein I allowed a friend to “highlight” it at my apartment because I was too impatient to wait for my Aveda appointment. Highlight = fry until it breaks off. Lesson learned.)

In 2005, we bought our first house in Phoenix and we created my “Toy Story bathroom” — it the Jack N Jill bathroom that would later become the connector between the kids’ rooms. This was a solid two years before we had kids, for the record. I wish I had pictures. We even bought the Disney paint. I recall one of the colors was “Buzz Blaster Blue.”

In October of 2009, Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2 were re-released in the theaters in 3-D. Mattix was 2 years old, Molley was 1 year old. It was their first movie. Both almost made it through Toy Story 1.

Yes, I dug through my Facebook photos to find that horribly grainy CrackBerry photo from 2009.

In the Summer of 2010, Toy Story 3 came out. Our friends Sarah and Matt came to San Diego to visit and they went to the theater to see it with us. The kids sat through the entire movie, completely engaged. Moll wasn’t quite 2 and Matty was 3. They were in love with it. The adults may or may not have fought tears at the end.

On Wednesday night, our little family of four went to Toy Story 3 on Ice in San Diego. It’s funny how life goes – that 12 years earlier, Ed and I were at the original Toy Story on ice, with no clue that one day, we’d be watching the third edition with our two children.

The kids were very excited. The show got off to a bit of a slow start, but the second half was amazing. Like, the kids didn’t move in inch in their seats amazing. I took this picture before it began.

Yep, they’re eating hot dogs and playing with $40 in light up toys. I’m a sucker.

We didn’t get them into bed until 11 on a school night, but it was so worth it. We all loved the show. Molley’s favorite part was with Barbie “because she’s funny.” It concerns me that my 3-year-old might just get the adult humor.

You can still see it in San Diego today and through the weekend. It’s playing at Valley View. If you live elsewhere, check the website because it’s touring.

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I was provided with tickets for the show, but I think it’s safe to say we would have purchased them otherwise. I wasn’t asked to write this blog post. I mainly did it to put it all in one place because Toy Story has such a special place in my heart! Just wait ’til I have enough time to post all of our Disneyland Toy Story photos from the past two years!

Tagged as: disney