Baby Awesome’s First Movie: How The Grinch Stole Christmas

*Disclosure: This is a sponsored post on behalf of Verizon FiOS SoCal Experience. All thoughts and opinions, as always, are my own.

The holidays are extra special for our family this year because of Baby Awesome, and we are having a blast doing holiday themed activities with her! Although last year was technically her first Christmas, she was only four days old so this year has been a lot of fun getting to do fun things together as a family. We’ve gone to see Santa, we’ve put Christmas lights on our house, and this past weekend we took her to see her first movie! We went to the Art Theatre of Long Beach for a Movie & Meet of How The Grinch Stole Christmas presented by Verizon and Starz®.

The event was free to the public and benefited the Food Bank of Southern California. Verizon and Starz® were collecting donations for the Food Bank at the event, and we went shopping the night before to get some of the needed items on the Food Bank’s list including soup, rice, beans, pasta, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, and deodorant. Here’s a snapshot of some of the items we brought with us for our donation:

When we walked up we were greeted by The Grinch himself! Actually, there were two Grinches and they were taking photos with everyone as they walked in. Here we are with our bags of food and toiletries for the Food Bank of Los Angeles.

The movie theatre was really unique and reminded me of an old school movie experience. It was originally built in 1924 and has since been restored and updated. It had a warm, cozy feel to it. When we walked in we were given complimentary candy, popcorn, and drinks for the movie. Then we headed to our seats. There were Carolers in the movie theatre singing Christmas Carols and one of The Grinches came into the theatre and was goofing around with everyone in their seats. He was such a ham for the camera.

The team at Verizon and Starz® also put a pair of Reindeer Antlers under everyone’s movie seat. We didn’t see ours right away and a little boy who was probably no more than four years old came up to us and gave a pair of antlers to Baby Awesome. He told me he wanted her to have them. It was the sweetest thing. Talk about the spirit of giving. We put them on her and loved them so much that we headed back out to the red carpet to take another photo with The Grinch.

I will admit that I was unsure about how Baby Awesome was going to do during the movie, but she did great! When the movie first started she was babbling and making all sorts of squealing noises and it was super cute. In a normal movie theatre I would have been nervous or felt like I needed to quiet her down, but there were so many kids in the audience that it didn’t even phase me. It was such a fun, welcoming environment for families.

Baby Awesome made it through most of the movie. She really enjoyed all of the songs and got excited whenever they started singing. She ended up falling asleep in my lap for the last 30 minutes and took a nice snooze.

When the movie was over we checked out the donation bin for the Food Bank of Los Angeles and it was so full that they added a second bin for all of the donations. Talk about awesome!

The Movie & Meet was sold out and in addition to all the donations received, Verizon donated $2,500 to the Food Bank of Los Angeles for everyone’s participation. This was one of several events Verizon FiOS has done this year as part of its SoCal Experience campaign to give back to the community. These are exactly the types of events we’d like to do more of as a family to help foster the spirit of giving and teach Baby Awesome the importance of giving back.

The holidays aren’t over yet, and the Food Bank of Southern California accepts donations now and all year long. If you would like to make a donation to the Food Bank of Southern California, you can visit their website for more information here. You don’t even have to bring donations into a physical location. You can also donate online using this form.

Happy Holidays!

What about you? How old was your child when you took them to their first movie? How do you give back to your local community? Post in the comments and let me know!