Teen Beach High School Movie Musical

I am not even sure how it started.  

One day a couple of months ago, I walked into the living room and found Arden ENGROSSED in "High School Musical."  What the what?  I have some nieces who were totally into those movies a few years ago, but I thought that since Arden was a baby at the time that I had dodged the High School Musical bullet.  

No such luck.  

Before I knew what hit me, I had High School Musical, High School Musical 2, and (most painful of all) High School Musical 3 taking up valuable space on my DVR (who the heck taught Arden to use the remote??  Oh wait, that was me.)

I canNOT express to you how cheesy these shows are.  They are absolutely dripping in runny, melty, gooey cheese sauce.  Just for a tiny example: in one of the movies (they all kind of blur together), the male lead (Troy!) is in the middle of a playoff basketball game (and is, of course playing basketball while simultaneously singing about playing basketball), when suddenly time freezes and the lights all dim as the female lead (Gabriella!) stands up in the crowd, looks adoringly at Troy and breaks into song about how much she belieeeeves in yooou, and he sings back to her that is aaaall that matters and then the game restarts and I think I just thew up in my mouth a little bit.  You get the idea.

During the commercials of each and every one of HSM's (High School Musicals, duh), they kept playing a preview for "Teen Beach Movie," yet another Disney musical starring teenagers.  Arden had been waiting rather impatiently for the promised day of happiness when she could finally watch it.  She even made me set the DVR ahead of time to be sure not to miss it (aren't I a nice mom?).  

To this day, I am smack in the middle of Teen Beach Movie pandemonium.  Just today, Arden gave me 12 quarters (representing 85% of her earthly wealth) so that I would download to her MP3 player the following songs:  "Surf Crazy," "Cruisin' for a Bruisin'," and "Falling for Ya."  As soon as they were downloaded, her and Cora took turns wearing her headphones and dancing around the kitchen to them.  (I kind of loved it when Cora was listening, because she only knows a few of the words, but sings the whole song.  It sounds something like this:  "Now I'm Faaaaaling for Ya!  Faaaaling for Ya!  mmmameeebaat I, caaamlaaaow I'm, Faaaaaaling for Ya!  Faaaaaaling for Ya!  laaaaamaaalonger now I'm Falling fooor yooou!"  Should have got her on video!  Next time.)

Then we went outside so I could work on the yard, and the kids said they were going to act out the movie. They all sat down on the grass and spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out who was going to be Tanner, since Arden was going to be MacKenzie and Cora was going to be Layla and Dax was going to be Brady.  After thinking about that for a while and not coming to a satisfactory conclusion, they lost interest and just squirted each other with the hose.  While singing, of course.

Luckily, today was a busy day and we didn't get a chance to watch the actual movie, but here are some pictures of Cora and Arden dancing along with the finale that I got the other day:

I will say that I don't hate Teen Beach Movie nearly as much as High School Musical (but I guess give me a few weeks and check back).  The worst part TBM is that some of the songs are sneaky little ear worms! They crawl up inside your brain and then you can't get them out again!  So help me, I have been singing this song at the store, pulling weeds, etc.: "Surf Surf Sand!  It's a bikini wonderlaaand!  Summer's on, and we've gone surf surf CRAZY!"  It's true.  Surf Surf Crazy.

Help me.

Help me please.