Grandma Creates Backyard 'Drive-In' Movie Theater, Wins Summer

Summer break is the grandmother of invention

Drive-in theaters aren’t really a thing anymore, which is a shame, because those of us who’ve spent a night watching a movie from the comfort of our cars remember how fun they could be. One grandmother in Ohio wanted to help her grandkids have that experience, so she made a drive-in theater for them.

Sherrie Pratt has six grandkids and an entire summer to entertain them. That’s not easy. But thanks to her ingenuity, and the internet, she found a fun way to keep them occupied, at least for a night or two!

“My aunt made a ‘drive-in’ for all the kids in the family and this is exactly how extra I want to be when I’m older,” Jessie Woods, Pratt’s niece, said in her tweet. Judging by the ecstatic reaction the images received online, she’s not alone. Her tweet has nearly 200,000 likes.

ABC News shared the story of how Pratt got the idea.

“I was scrolling on Amazon one night and saw these movie projectors and it hit me,” Pratt told the network. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to have an outdoor movie night?’ So I made these cars out of these little boxes for them. My son is a graphic designer, so I had him make the license plates with their names. Things just kept popping in my head to make it like a real drive-in. We just invited anybody who could make it. I think we had 12 children there.”

All the little details added up to an absolutely adorable experience for those kids, complete with concessions!

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/881685616202842114

“We have six grandchildren between my husband and I, and they’re all off school, so we were looking for fun entertainment to do,” Pratt said.

Mission accomplished.

Of course, simple summer entertainment isn’t all Grandma Sherrie was after. Her sister-in-law, Sonja Woods, explained why Sherrie’s project was extra meaningful.

“It’s really, really nice because our mother passed away a year ago and her worst thing she worried about is that we were all going to drift apart. We do a sisters thing once a month and tons of things with the kids and grandkids, something that they’re going to remember,” Woods told ABC News. “Not too many people do things that kids remember a year down the road, let alone 10 years down the road. People are drifting away from that. We always try to get together because life’s too short.”

Great. I don’t know what movie they played that night, but now I’m sitting here like I just watched the first ten minutes of UP!