Are Elves Related to Munchkins?

I took my kids to see Polar Express last night. Well, let me start from the beginning. I mistakenly thought that travel was over for my spouse. We’ll just chalk that up to a communication error… he may have very well told me, I just may have chosen to tune it out… a self defense mechanism. So since he was gone yet another weekend, the kids and I did what we always do when he’s gone: We go to IHOP and have breakfast for dinner and then we see a movie.

First let me say, we are really getting this IHOP thing under control. The first time we did this back in September, we ate so much, after we were finished my 2nd Son said, “Mom, I think I’m gonna puke.” Just the thought of the vast quantity of ‘empty and bad’ calories we consumed makes me nauseous. The 2nd time we went, we toned it down, as we have every time since. Last night for sure was the best we’d done, eating 5 scrambled eggs with cheese, 1 chocolate chip pancake, 2 pieces of French toast (that’s 2 halves), 1 Belgian Waffle, and a short stack of buttermilk pancakes. That’s 3 kids and me. And we toned it way way down from that first time.

Polar Express was a VERY fun movie. We all enjoyed it and the animation really was phenomenal. I will say two funny things happened.

First, at the beginning of the movie, the little boy rushes to his bedroom window when he hears something. It is cold outside and has been snowing and as he rushes to the window, he leans on the radiator and quickly singes himself. My 2nd son says, “Mom, what is THAT?” I reply, “That’s a radiator.” His answer back to me was, “What’s a radiator?”

That’s a Florida kid for you. He’d never heard of nor seen a radiator heater. I just found it very funny. And on a side note, none of my children have ever seen snow…

Last, near the end of the movie, the kids are at the North Pole and all the elves run out and I swear, I could not get this out of my head, “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead…” I couldn’t get past the whole Elf is to North Pole as Munchkin is to the Land of Oz thing. They had these funky little voices and this entire Wizard of Oz flashback of mine, threatened to ruin the entire Elf scene for me.

We got in the car and I confided in my 9 year old about it. I asked him, “When you saw and heard the elves, did you think, “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead…” and he stared at me blankly and said, “No, Mom, why would you think that?” I just told him nevermind.

If any of you have seen this movie and thought that, let me know!