Our Movie

I have a very special place in my heart for the movie Up. I usually live blog most movie reactions, but   this time I would rather construct this personal response while I watch for the 100th time. 

Everyone meet Brent:

We met my freshman year of high school while I lived in Florida, while he was wearing a pair of glasses in class one day, I told him that he looked like Carl Fredricksen, the main character in Up. According to Instagram, the picture below was taken 149 weeks ago.

After we started talking, we found that we both loved that movie, I loved the storyline and the poignancy of the film, and he liked the talking dogs. Regardless, we both loved the film and would talk about it often. 

Flash forward two years, to our junior year. I let him know that my dad got orders for us to move to Honolulu, Hawaii and that I wouldn't be completing my senior year at our school. We were both sad, but decided to make the most of the time we had left. 

Flash forward a couple of months and after a successful homecoming, he handed me a packet of notecards that said "Clues" on the front with the very explicit instructions of "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL I TELL YOU TO".

Flash forward about three and a half weeks and I receive a very mysterious text to asking if I still knew where these cards were, and if I did, to open and read them.

On the other side of each one was a question about the movie Up, hangman-style with certain letters of the answers circled. Once I was done with all of the clues, the circled letters spelled out "COME TO THE GAZEBO". (There was a park with a Gazebo about five minutes away from my house.)

I walk out to the spot he told me to go to and see this.

Brent bought 80 balloons from the nearest grocery store and an industrial ladder, climbed to the top of the gazebo and tied them to the top to make it look as much like the house from our favorite movie as possible. He handed me a giant bear (thats my head sticking out from behind it) and flowers and asked me to our Junior prom. Of course, I said yes and we had an awesome time. 

Although we go to different schools now, (he is at UCLA), we both still love the movie. And to this day, hundreds of times after watching it, I still cry at the opening scene and he still looks forward to yelling "SQUIRREL!"

The End.