Toy Story 3: Be kind to your toys

I've been begging my lovely SO to go see Toy Story 3 with me for a few weeks.  To his credit, he's a good sport and we tried to go once but it was sold out.  Luckily for me, his mom wanted to go see it too so we headed to the awesome Prytania Theatre in New Orleans.  The best thing about the Prytania (besides the sticky movie theatre candy floors of course) are the retro snack commercials they play before the movie starts.  If you open the website on the link I sent you, you'll soon have "Let's All Go to the Lobby" stuck in your head too.

But really I can't take away from the awesomeness that is Toy Story 3 by blogging extensively about cartoon snack commercials.  If you haven't seen the final round of Buzz & Woody, go see it.  I loved it, but that's not what I'm going to talk about today.

In case you're curious, and even if you're not I don't really care I present...

The Toys that I Loved that are Living in an Attic and Should Probably be Donated to a Child who will Love them but Instead will Live in the Attic Because I am Selfish:

Okay, so it probably goes without saying that I liked/like Breyer horses.  My Little Pony's weren't realistic enough, but Breyer's couldn't (and still can't really) be beat for realism and aesthetic value.  They're a bit pricy as a kids toy, but lucky for me I had a Grandmother with a shopping addiction who wanted to spoil her grand kids rotten.  Lucky for my family?  Probably not when they had to bail her out of debt several years later, but hey I had a totally bitching herd of fake horses so I was too young to care much.  These horses suffered several broken legs due to their extensive training regiments - I had a notebook where I would write down names, disciplines, and show schedules.  My grandfather built a wooden barn custom for them that had a little sign up top with "MyLastName Stables" burned into it.  Now horses, barn, and kiddy accessories all are lovingly packed up in a box in my attic.  I actually have a decent collection of these as an adult, but the carpet herd is being saved for when I might have my own horse crazy kid someday.  With my luck, there are only going to be boys who like motorcycles and zombies.

I don't have a picture, but my best stuffed companion was Brown Bear.  Yes, I realize that is a gray bear shown  in the picture.  No, brown bear was not brown.  I had an imaginative color palette and naming scheme at two.  There was also Fluffy Puppy, though I can't remember if that was actually my brother's stuffed toy.  Throughout my childhood there was a large string of stuffed animals, many got yard saled and some tossed I think.. but a lot are in the attic still.  A high light was Refrigerator Bear (another naming gem I know) who was a pink oversized bear with a rainbow on his stomach that stood taller than I did.  My dad won him for me at the NC State Fair.  He moved on at a yard sale because he was really too big to fit anywhere reasonably, sad day.

Real life circus?  Cruel and unusual punishment for animals.  Playmobil Circus?  Best thing EVER.  The highlight was a group of 6 plastic gray horses (are we noticing a theme here?) that had pink feathers for their heads and saddles.  I was very serious about training these horses.  I would line them up and shout out the secret command "Montoyo!" (I do not know where I got these things, seriously) over and over to train the plastic beasts.  This is something my dear Father has never forgotten.  So much so, that whenever I come back from a real horse show and have done well, he'll ask me if I told the horse "Montoyo!" to get that blue ribbon.  Sigh, childhood sillies.

On that note, I need to go back to pretending to work.  I'm a bit excited on the real horse front, because I found a nice gelding on Craig's List today that is looking for a half lease.  From the owner's description, he sounds like a quality animal and that's good to hear mixed in with the ads that go something like "She likes to go real fast and you don't need no saddle because she's too fat to wear one".  Will have to see, it'd be nice to ride again!