I'm telling you, this whole having kids old enough to babysit themselves thing is pretty awesome. It took us long enough to get here, but now that we are…well, we don't really utilize this new awesomeness that much, but it's super nice to know we can if we want to. And on Tuesday night we wanted to.

Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides, sailed into St. Louis a few days early for a pre-screening. The past screenings we've gone to we've been able to take our whole family, but they anticipated a large turn out for this one and just gave us two tickets. And man, oh, man, they were right. The theater was PACKED including one tiny dog that apparently sneaked past security. They were tight on the cell phones and cameras alright, but tiny dogs? No problem!

Evidentally the tiny dog really likes pirate movies, though, because we never heard a peep from it all night and it was sitting right in front of us. Maybe he was mesmerized by the mermaids.

I'm definitely not going to outline the story for you – basically you know – there's this crazy pirate who gets in all kinds of mischief but he's hilarous in the doings of it and he survives in the end, savvy?

I'll confess that all of our kids have watched the three previous Pirates of the Caribbean movie and they were all bent out of shape that Craig and I were going to this one without them. But I'll tell you that while we were watching this on the big screen (and this was one of the few movies where I thought the 3D was effective and worth it) I was really glad the girls weren't there. I had kind of forgotten that we do have them cover their eyes are various parts of the others and there was plenty in this one that would have ignited our 9yo's throw up response to oversized violence. She would deny it, though. She's the one who loves the pirates the most!

We'd had a fair amount of family discussion on the disappointment of Will and Elizabeth not being in this one, but I'll tell you that while watching it, I totally forgot all about Will and Elizabeth until the movie was over and then I was all, "Oh drat, they didn't include Will and Elizabeth!" In short, it didn't take away from the movie at all. Johnny Depp is what makes this movie what it is, don't you know?

I enjoyed the Angelica character in this one and liked how the movie ended to set up the next one. Craig and I were talking about the various different ways #5 could end up going.

Overall, a fun way to spend a couple of hours and I'd defintely recommend seeing it on the big screen while you can.