Bad Nachos

I know most of you have already read this, but for those of you who haven't, this is some good entertainment! We went to the movies on a Friday night and Austin was a bit annoyed by something and he, mostly joking, sent Cinemark an email. Here's how it all went down:

Austin's letter to Cinemark:

I would be remiss if I did not pass along some feedback on my snack
experience tonight. It is a simple concern, but for some reason it
ticked me off. My nachos did not have near enough cheese to truly be
considered nachos. In addition, the temperature of the cheese was not
sufficient to allow it to ooze across the chips the way it should. It
all came out of the container in one large glob. All in all, really poor
nachos. I brought my concerns to the attention of the clerk, who
informed me that he could sell me more cheese for $1.50. Really, you
give the customer inadequate, cold cheese and then seek to charge him
more money to make the situation right? He looked at me as if I were
asking some grand thing to be spotted a little cheese, quite rude.
Since my movie was starting, I chose not to pursue the matter further, I
took my crappy, overprices semi-nachos and went to enjoy being at the
movies. Thankfully the movie was better than the nachos.

Austin


Dear Austin,

Thank you for taking the time to let us know where we can improve. We are always on the look out for better ways to improve our service and product. Many times people will accept sub-par service and say nothing, allowing the problem to get worse. We take every comment and concern from our guests VERY seriously. At CINEMARK, it the goal of every one of our employees that every customer leave our buildings totally and completely satisfied. Occasionally we lose sight of this goal and thanks to emails such as this one, we get a little wake-up call.

As for your nachos, you are entirely right. When you think of Nachos, you usually imagine cheese flowing from chip to chip. You look at the mass of cheese and chips and search for that one perfect chip that has as much cheese as physics will allow, but just enough room for you to get your fingers on it. To me that's what makes great nachos. Our nachos can be that way. But in order for them to be all that they can be, they must be prepared properly. The cheese must be hot and fresh. It sounds like the cheese was not even close to being ready. For this I apologize. After all, it's the cheese that makes the Nachos. Our concessionist should have offered you the extra cheese and nachos for free being that you were dissatisfied. We guarantee our product. If it is not fresh or tastes bad, let a Manager know and we will fix it or refund your money. I will be addressing all of our staff on how to properly serve our guests. I will let them know that if our guest is not satisfied with our product it is our job to fix it or refund their money.

We understand that often times it's the little things that make the biggest impact on your overall movie going experience. Movie Theaters are known for their Nachos. We don't want you to remember your experience here with bad Nachos. I have passed this on to the CINEMARK Food and Beverage Department in hopes that they may have another possible solution to this issue. I would like to invite you back to our theater to give us and our Nachos another shot, on us. If you will reply to this message with your mailing address, I would love to send you some complimentary movie passes as well as a gift card that you can use to purchase Nachos. You may also stop by the theater and we can get these to you.

Thank you for letting us know where we made a mistake. If you ever have a question, concern, comment or would simply like to chat movies, come find me at the theater. I would love to hear from you.

General Manager



As if the email response wasn't enough, there's more to the story! Austin went in to redeem our tickets and nachos before we went to the movies on Friday night. He met with Brandon (who's in his early 20's) and they kind of laughed over the emails. Then he said, "Let me go get the tickets for you." He left for a minute and then came back and said, "Oh, I forgot to ask you how many people are in your family." Austin wasn't quite sure why he was asking, but somewhat hopeful that he might actually give us a ticket for every member of our family. When Brandon came back, he handed Austin 12, yes 12, free tickets! How crazy is that? But wait, we're not done! He then goes into the ticket booth and hands Austin a $20 gift card to use at concessions. So, I think we figured that we ended up with a bit over $100 worth of stuff all for the $1.50 worth of extra cheese that that, what we now think, AWESOME "concessionist" didn't feel like giving us. So, pretty much, Brandon's awesome!

Kamae's First Day of Kindergarten

You'd think that because I did this with Paige just last year that it wouldn't be as hard to see my second child go to kindergarten on her first day. I wasn't a blubbering mess, but I was a bit choked up on the drive over. Once I got there and saw how excited she was to be there, it got easier. It's just hard knowing that she's now entering the phase of life where there's more outside influences on her and that she's going to have to make her own decisions and I just pray that they are the right ones! I know she'll do great in school and her teacher seems nice (this is her first year teaching at this school, so I don't know much about her). I thoroughly enjoy getting to see her walk in the door after school (I'm usually teaching piano and carpool drops her off), looking so grown up and excited to tell me all about her day! I hope that part never ends!

Paige's 1st Day of 1st Grade

Paige was beyond excited to go to her first day of school. Her teacher, Miss Larsen, is so sweet and she just couldn't wait to buy school lunch like a big kid. It seems like she has changed so much since I dropped her off for her first day of kindergarten. Her conversations are so much more grown up and I am amazed at the stuff she can pick up on now. (She can tell you all of the details in the love triangle with Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay and Ryan...not sure if that's a good or bad thing, but she amazed me when she explained it all to me!) I am just having to come to grips with the fact that I now have a little girl that's not so little anymore. There's a huge part of me, however, that is so excited about this transformation. I'm excited to have a shopping buddy and someone who will watch shows with me like American Idol, The Next Food Network Star, So You Think You Can Dance, etc. and get all caught up in them just like I do. She gets so excited about products she sees on infomercials and I love hearing her describe them to me in detail and tell me that I'm over 18 so I can order them and I just have to have it! I'm excited for my new little budding friend! I love her to pieces and am so thrilled to be able watch her grow up!

Dance Auditions

This was the first time these girls had to audition for dance. Last year was the first time this dance studio had a competing team for the little girls Paige's age and the owner kind of just hand picked her group. Well, this year, they had to audition, numbers and all. It was very nerve racking as a mother because you drop them off and sit in a room and they've covered all of the windows, so no one can see in. So, you have no idea how they did, but all you can do is hope they did well. The girls weren't nervous one bit! They both felt they did well! I was hoping for Kamae to make the team that Paige was on last year and that Paige would make the next level up. Well, that didn't happen! Paige made the group we were hoping for and Kamae superceded my expectations and made the same group as Paige! Woo hoo! That will be so much easier for me to handle. So, we are very proud of both of them and can't wait to start this new year of dance!

High School Musical 2 Party!!

Paige and Kamae had some of their girl friends over the weekend before school started for a High School Musical 2 Premier/Back 2 School pajama party! We ordered some pizza and had lots of goodies, popcorn and drinks! We had to take an intermission because they started getting a little wild towards the middle. I let them go play in the backyard and they thought that was so funny to play outside in their pajamas. I'm sure the screams and squeals could be heard for miles around!

These pictures are not for the squeamish...

So, if you haven't noticed by the dates of the last two posts, we had a busy Saturday with the dance auditions and then getting ready for the girls' pajama party. Well, in the middle of the High School Musical 2 party, Kamae comes up to me and says, "Daddy needs to talk to you." So, I go find him in the downstairs bathroom holding a washcloth to his forehead. I thought maybe he was feverish or had a headache or something. So, I asked him what was wrong and he said, "I think I need stitches." I had him show me and I about lost my pizza right then and there. I really don' t do well with these sorts of things. (Hopefully Austin will be home when our kids decide to do something similar!) He was putting up shelves in our laundry room and couldn't get enough weight behind the drill to drill into the stud. So, standing on a step ladder, he went to put his foot on the door frame which was directly behind him so he could push off and get the "umph" that he needed. Well, when he went to push off, his foot slipped and went through the doorway instead of on the door frame and he lost his balance and it sent him flying toward the door frame. Since his hands were full of screws and the drill, his forehead is what stopped the fall, right on the corner of the door frame. Ouch!! Well, here I've got a husband who needs to go to the hospital with a head injury and a housefull of 8 wild girls and two little boys. What do I do? I keep telling Austin that I'm sure any of the mom's of these girls would come over to help watch while I took him to the ER or I could find someone to drive him. Being the macho man that he his, he insists that I stay and that he'll drive himself. I was just worried that he might black out on the way, but apparently I was "overreacting". So, he wrapped an ace bandage over the washcloth and around his head and off he went. Luckily, I was overreacting and he arrived there safely. He ended up getting 26 stitches, 4 (maybe 5?) of those being deep tissue stitches. He was able to get the stitches out 5 or 6 days later and it seems to be healing really well! So, that was the end of our fun filled day! Oh, I forgot to mention that on the way home from seeing the results from the dance auditions the alternator in our car went out and the car died on us about 6 blocks from home. It was a lovely day!

Soccer

I guess this year we didn't think we had enough to do, so we decided to throw soccer into the midst of it all! Of course, the girls can't be on the same team (due to the age difference), so we're running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to keep up with practices and game schedules. The girls have loved it, but I think they like the idea of being on a team, wearing cool shin guards, running around and the possibility of playing goalie more than they like to get in there and kick the ball. I guess whatever keeps them active, right? It's been fun and it's nice to be able to sit outside and have the other kids play on the playground. One more week...we can do it!

It was a good idea...at first...

When we went to Virginia last summer, one of the girls' favorite memories was playing outside in the rain. It just started down pouring and since it was so warm, we just sent them all out in their clothes and they got soaked. They thought that was the coolest thing ever! So, everytime it has rained in Utah since then, they've asked, excuse me, I mean begged, to go play out in the rain. What they haven't understood is that when it's cold outside it wouldn't be nearly as much fun. So, it's August and blistering hot, and it's raining. It's finally time to let them get their swimsuits on and go have a hay day in the rain. They've been begging for it for a year now. They all stampede upstairs, literally screaming with delight. They get their swimsuits on quicker than I've ever seen them do anything and they all run outside. I am not exaggerating in any way shape or form when I say that they are all back in my kitchen, dripping wet, shivering, yelling, "I need my towel!!! I need my towel!!!" in less than 3 minutes. What? Seriously? So, we sent them back outside to wait for their towels. That's when Austin snapped this picture of Spencer. If you can't tell, he's got the pout face down!!

Baby Jack Jack

These are some recent pictures of our little man. He's just growing so fast and boy, can he move. For someone that can't crawl, or even scoot, this kid sure gets around!! He rolls pretty quickly and can turn himself in circles. If you position him just right, you can get him to sit up for awhile, but once he loses his balance, he's a goner!:)