Back when my husband and I were single, which is what I fondly refer to the time after we were married but before we had kids, we used to go to a lot of movies. Once we had kids we only went to movies when we had a baby sitter. Often we’d cram many movies into my sister’s Christmas break visit. She is a Catholic sister and would visit for four or five days after Christmas.

It was a tradition my husband and I enjoyed immensely. In our financially-lean years when I was a stay-at-home mom and he was the only one working, we would movie hop. We’d pay for one movie, then once it was over, we’d hop into others. I’m not advocating that behavior, one because it’s wrong, but also because it’s a horrible way to see a movie. There was one movie we saw bits and pieces over the span of several hours as we darted in and out. It wasn’t until years later we saw the whole thing from beginning to end on Netflix.

Our daughters, when they were old enough to realize the error of our ways, pointed out the lack of moral integrity and how overwhelming movie cramming is to our senses. It’s true, both the integrity and sensorial overload. There are movies I think I’ve seen, but when I view them they don’t seem familiar at all. Again, we were young and broke, but I don’t advocate the behavior for any reason. We have ended our wicked movie hopping ways.

We still enjoy seeing movies on the big screen. However, we seemed to have lost our movie mojo. Over the past several years we’ve had a difficult time catching movies we want to see. They’re gone before we even have to time have a conversation about whether we should see one.

Remember the days when movies were out for two or three months? I grew up in a one screen movie theater town. We had plenty of opportunity to see movies we wanted to see with time in between to do something productive when movies played we weren’t interested in. Even when my husband and I were first married there was more lag in the speed at which a movie would leave the theater, good and bad ones.

Nowadays, if a movie doesn’t have the appropriate marketing, it can be gone in a couple weeks. There’s also a timing issue. Often my husband and I aren’t interesting in going to the movies one week, but the next week when we are, there is nothing we want to see. We’re constantly asking each other, “What happened to that one movie we saw the preview for?”

Over the holidays several movies came out we really wanted to see. My husband said, “Well, we can’t see them all.” Challenge accepted! We started on Christmas day with Coco with our daughters, then worked our way through the holidays into the new year. We would see two movies in a day with a lunch break in between. We chased a couple before they got away and saw seven in total from that first one until Jan. 11.

Some were intense enough we wished we had seen them in a different order, but they were all fantastic and I’d recommend each one. Here is our movie list of the season: “The Greatest Showman,” “All the Money in the World,” “The Darkest Hour,” “I Tonya,” “Molly’s Game,” “The Post.” We spanned theaters from Kent to Issaquah to Alderwood.

Challenge complete.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing on her website livingwithgleigh.com, on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh by Gretchen Leigh,” or twitter @livewithgleigh. Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Life section.