the riot and the dance.

We haven't always had TV in our home.  I mean, kind of.  But then again, kind of not.

When Todd and I were first married, and living in an apartment that boasted free cable (and an actual meth lab two doors down the hall, etc.), we had alllllll the channels.  Of course, I used that privilege to watch endless episodes of Friends and Scrubs on syndication while Todd was working his interminable overnight shifts.

When we moved to Story City and the cable didn't come free and we were dirt-poor, we scrapped the cable.  In fact, that was also right around the time that antennae TVs stopped working and you had to get one of those special boxes to even get the free basic channels.  We didn't feel like exerting the energy necessary to figure that out, so we basically watched endless VCR-recorded episodes of Cheap Seats on a massive, ancient, brick of a television set Todd got in the mid-nineties.  The kids had a couple Yo Gabba Gabba DVDs, and I also had all ten seasons of Friends on DVD because, "How do I live without Friends, I want to know..."  I have no idea how someone would go about that.

When we moved to Cedar Falls, we didn't even have a place to hook up the TV, so we watched a lot of very tiny Netflix shows on a very tiny laptop in the living room.

When we got here, we were blessed with a giant family room in the basement, with a giant sectional, to fit our giant family... and a big ol' blank wall where a TV ought to go.  But The Brick had been jettisoned in the move, so we continued to watch shows on the laptop, which was getting harder and harder to crowd around as our family grew.

And then last Christmas, Todd's parents gifted us a TV.  A real TV that hangs on the wall.  A TV that can stream Netflix.  A TV large enough for all of us to see from the sectional.  It has been, well, glorious.

I tell you all this backstory as a wordy way of getting to this point: we have spent some of our family time lately watching nature documentaries together on our slammin' TV, and loving every second of it.  So when we heard about a Creation-perspective nature documentary being released called "The Riot and the Dance," we were really excited. 

It was showing for one night at our local theater, so we bought tickets for ourselves and the four biggest kids, and planned to make a night of it with tons of popcorn and Reese's Pieces.  The kids had a great time, and the documentary itself was so great! 

Ever a cynic, I figured it would be creationistic in the sense that, where the macroevolutionary garble typically shows up in these things, it would just have some little pacifying Christian spin.  But it was rooted so deeply in Scripture, and really highlighted the interplay of Creation, and the Fall, and the longing for redemption as seen in nature, and how they all interact with the principles of mankind's call to stewardship and dominion.

Throughout the showing, Penelope just kept whispering, "I love this!  I love this movie!"  The boys were pretty quiet through most of it.  Laurelai was super wiggly - understandable, as this was her first experience in a movie theater, but unfortunate, as she was barely heavy enough to hold the folding chair seat down and catapulted herself right out of it a couple times.

Oh, well.  She survived, and actually enjoyed the little bits of the movie she saw in between wiggling, chatting and begging for more Reese's Pieces.

I'm so glad we got the chance to go to this.   We'll definitely be getting it on DVD once it comes out. If you have a chance to see it at your theater, you really should!