I’ve wanted to do backyard movies with a projector and screen for five years, ever since my wife and I moved from our St. Paul high-rise condo into a single-family dwelling with a big back yard.
For one reason or another — including several summers filled with home-improvement projects — we never got around to it.
Then, this month, we were mulling a follow-up to an epic party we hosted in June. That was the biggest bash we had ever thrown, and thinking about how to top it made our heads hurt.
Then it dawned on us: Let’s not even try. Instead of organizing an adult gathering, we decided to focus on kids and build an equally epic — but very different — event around them.
Hello, movie night.
And since the little kids of our friends, neighbors and colleagues tend to skew female, “Frozen” was the obvious (heck, the only) film choice.
We ended up hosting not one but two “Frozen” backyard-movie events, each with a different mix of guests.
I cobbled together a pretty decent tech setup with a 90-inch projection screen we bought on sale at Best Buy, my beloved Apple iPod Hi-Fi classic boombox for rich sound, a handful of laptops with “Frozen” loaded on them, and a couple of home-movie projectors I procured on loan for review in my capacity as a technology journalist.
Our movie nights worked out wonderfully. Our guests had plenty of room to spread out on blankets, patio furniture and folding chairs on our big lawn, and they seemed to enjoy themselves. 
Summer complete. Movie night with my Ava, courtesy of @ojezap and crew. 🙂 Thank you!!! pic.twitter.com/Ise2hvgAvc — Kate-Madonna Hindes (@girlmeetsgeek) August 24, 2014
My wife even pampered the guests at the second movie night with a Latino delicacy: Cooked dates topped with syrup made of panela (whole unrefined cane sugar), and served with slices of mozzarella cheese. (She’s kicking herself for not thinking of this for the first event.)
Our teenager and his neighborhood buddies wanted no part of this “Frozen” nonsense, but the boys were more than happy to help us serve food and drink before vanishing to play Xbox 360. They are good kids.
Our friends pitched in with serving, clean-up and more, as well. We have great friends.
We made memories on these two nights. They were great opportunities to catch up with our friends, bond with neighbors, and derive maximum enjoyment from the wonderfully warm, humid summer nights.
We’re already talking about move-night variations, such as a teen night (so my son can hang out with his friends and watch a movie of their choosing) and a grand and geeky gathering of our adult-nerd friends — “Empire Strikes Back,” anyone?
I love summer.
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