Of the many elements of Quarantine Life that I never could have predicted, one bright spot has turned out to be, of all things, Star Wars.

What?

Yep.

Star Wars.

To explain, my children were gifted Disney Plus from some family members for Christmas which was cool but not getting much use until, well, Quarantine Life began. I mean, we’d watched a few things on there in the first few months of the year but since mid-March? Holy moly cow. We have gotten very good use of that gift!

What inspired me to take advantage of the Star Wars element of Disney Plus, though, was, ironically, a different show – LEGO Masters, which our entire family loved the heck out of this Spring on FOX. Side note: I promise – our entire world does not revolve around TV, not even in the middle of a pandemic, even though it might seem like it based on this post.

If you watched that show (and if you didn’t, you definitely should!), you’ll remember that near the end of the season, they had a Star Wars themed episode and even though I knew my kids sort of knew what Star Wars is, I thought they’d appreciate the LEGO side of things more if we watched one of the movies first.

Well, the weekend we chose to tackle that turned out to be crappy, crappy weather, which meant one movie turned into three. Whoops! And, let the record show, we chose to go in release date order, so we started with Episodes 4, 5, and 6. I know there are big feelings around making that decision, but considering that I grew up watching them in that order made that choice make sense for me.

Another side note (or two): Star Wars has a significant place in my family history. If I’m remembering correctly, it’s the first movie my parents saw together in the movie theatre (but I’m going to have to fact check with my mom to make sure I’m not twisting details). And my brother loved Star Wars growing up, both the “old” and the “new” (Episodes 1, 2, and 3) that started coming out when we were in high school-ish.

I remember watching the originals with my brother as kids and definitely saw one of the last 90s ones in the theatre, but beyond that, I’ve been out of touch with this world for years. It is *not* Ben’s thing and that’s totally fine. He said maybe he’s seen some of the old ones, but even then, he doesn’t have any real connection to it, so if it was going to be anyone in our family to introduce it to the children, it was going to be me. And by children, I mean Big 3, because no way could Trumy handle these films at this point.

And, honestly, I have loved it. It has been such a joy to share that time and that story-line (confusing as it can be) with them over the course of the last couple months. And yes, in that time we have had enough crappy weather days to watch ALLLL the episodes. Last side note (maybe): we got thrown off near the end by the realization that there are also Star Was Stories movies, not just Episodes, so we may have gone off course by skipping those, but whatever – we wanted to watch all nine movies, and we did. Yay!

What I didn’t expect from all this was the different way this experience would connect with each of my kids.

For Harrison, it was a hilarious throw back in time because years ago his beloved franchise, Angry Birds, released two different (and freakishly accurately done) versions of “Angry Birds: Star Wars” in which they essentially went through all of the first six movies in AB format. And somewhere along the line in his obsession, we got him an AB SW encyclopedia that he read cover to cover (probably multiple times), so he knew a TON of what was going on in the those first two trilogies. Thankfully he knows not to give away spoilers, so he did a good job of not ruining anything for the other kids as we watched.

For Raegan, it was all of the amazing female characters in the movies. Yes, there are some issues within the stories, but there are some seriously strong women portrayed and I loved watching her respond to that in the films. I think she loved all of the main female characters, but I know for a fact she loved Rey the most and that she is going to have a character connection to her for a long, long time to come. We even had to attempt some Rey hair because, I mean, why not, right?! We’ll work on our costume skills; check back by Halloween for how far we’ve come.

For Lincoln, it was a whole lot of extra, unanticipated snuggles during the movies. He liked all of them and definitely liked acting them out in the yard after the fact, but he was a little less thrilled with the actual fight scenes in the actual movies, which meant that during each of them, at some point or another, he ended up right next to me on the couch. And of course I don’t take pleasure in my kids’ discomfort, but I definitely enjoyed being a source of comfort to him in the midst of that. I honestly don’t think he got as much out of the story as the other two, but the nice part of watching from home was the ability to pause, answer questions, and discuss as we made our way through them all.

And then, to bring the WHOLE thing full circle, B and I decided to get the children a surprise in the form of, yep, LEGO to commemorate this time of life and our movie watching that helped us get through some of the longer hours and days. What I didn’t realize until this morning, though, was that we had to perfect opportunity today (because again, some crappy wind and weather this afternoon) to present them a May the Fourth gift! So now, we LEGO which has been a huge and helpful strategy for our family during this whole quarantine existence.

And you know me, I love a good theme and a good story! 😉 And, LEGO! But let’s be real, having three kids trying to navigate building the same set did not come without squabbles and attempts to take each other’s turn. Such is life in a busy, big family, especially when we’ve been with just each other for close to eight weeks! But at least the building got started and not every moment was fighting.