Watching Movies

In honor of the Oscars today, a movie post. While most of you are chasing kids or serving people or things productive like that, we are not. Were enjoying Netflix, watching movies. We first subscribed about a year and a half ago and watch about 4-5 movies a week, and its become a part of our life.

We subscribe to three movies for a little under 20$ a month. We've learned some tips for making the most of Netflix:

*At least here in Raleigh, if you don't mail your movie by Thursday, you wont get another movie on Saturday. If you mail the movie on Friday or Saturday, the replacement movie comes Monday. Normally it's a two day turnaround from mailing a movie to getting a replacement.
*Check Rotten Tomatoes or Yahoo Movies to see if something good came out that week. Add it to you netflix list, even though its not on DVD yet, or possible not in theaters.
*Move movies coming soon to the top of your list when they have their set release date, so you can get them first.
*If you mail in a movie and it arrives at the netflix warehouse the day before a new release is released, Netflix will mail you that movie. Otherwise there can be weeks of waiting. This is bad when you really want to see something. Sometimes its not. For example, we waited 6 weeks for Alvin and the Chipmunks.
*If you have friends or family on Netflix, they have a social networking feature so you can see what movies they are watching and what movies they are awaiting. This is a great way to get ideas. If you are hiding something or have really embarrassing taste, it is probably not good to share lists. You can send notes and recommend movies you feel are up peoples alley. If any blog readers would like to do this, send us an e-mail and we can link up.
*Rate the movies. That way their is a feature where you can be given ideas or what you might like.

We didn't see a lot of the Oscar nominee movies this year, but have seen a lot of great DVD's. Here are all the movies and TV shows and we (Ryan mostly) have given the highest rating that we saw on Netflix, and recommend. Most are TV series, dramas or documentaries, but there are a few kids movies.
30 Rock: Season 1
The American President
Breach
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Double Indemnity
The Errand of Angels
Flash of Genius
Freaks & Geeks: The Complete Series
FDR: American Experience
The Gospel
John Adams
The King of Kong
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
Lars and the Real Girl
Miss Potter
The Namesake
The Office: Season 1
Shattered Glass
Stardust
Sunset Boulevard
Treasures of the Twilight Zone
Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys
Any great movies that we may have missed or that you recommend? Feel free to leave ideas in comments.

Help Our Neice Win the Peanut Butter Sandwich Contest

We hope you don't mind if we use this blog just once for a little bit of promotion.

Elizabeth our sweet niece's has been selected as a top ten finalists for the Jif's Seventh Annual Most Creative Peanut Butter Sandwich Contest. If she makes the top 5 she will get to go on a trip with her Mom to New York and get a $2500 college scholarship. If she wins first place she gets a $25,000 scholarship.

If you have a spare minute and feel so inclined, you can vote for her Jif Kabob recipe here. You can vote once a day till February 27.

My sister has more info on how they came up with the idea for the recipe and about the contest at her blog. This will probably be the only time in our lives that Wendy and I agree on voting for the same person, so we have to blog about that.

We'll let you know if she wins.

Good luck Elisabeth! And thanks for voting if you have!

Valentine's Visitors

We had the pleasure of Brady coming up from Georgia and Elizabeth, his girlfriend, coming down from New Jersey to spend the valentine's day weekend with us. We managed to have some fun activities and enjoyed the weekend with them.

WE had a few fun activities on Saturday. We went up to the Tobacco museum at Duke Homestead in Durham Saturday morning. The had a replica of the liberty bell made out of 350 pounds of tobacco. Outside they had an old time working tobacco farm. The museum was so convincing Brady and Cheyney momentarily tried to smoke some tobacco outside but they didn't have a lighter. After that we toured around Duke University and went to the chapel.

That evening we went down to an indoor skydiving place. We were filmed but the DVD doesn't convert or at least I cant do it yet. It was awesome though. Its the closet I (Ryan) can come to flying since I don't dare jump out of an airplane like the other three already have.

You know when you are cruising down the freeway and you put your hand out? Well its like doing that with your whole body inside a giant wind tunnel. I recommend it to all those who want to try. Here is an ad that shows what it was like.


Here is a quick sideshow of the day's activities below.

It's Snowing Again in Raleigh

It's still a big deal around these parts. Thats twice in one winter!