Alright, here goes...
When I was about 2 or 3, in 1996 and 1997, I was disapointed by the lack of good dinosaur shows on TV. Sure, there was the Disney live action "Dinosaurs", but that just didn't do it for me. I wanted to see dinosaurs portrayed a little more realistically. And then, one day on the disney channel, I think it was probably in 1997, this awesome show was on about dinosaurs. I'm pretty sure it was "The Great Valley adventure". Anyways, I immediately loved it---this was how I thought a dinosaur show should be done!
Well, at some point shortly afterwards, we got movie 4 on VHS. I loved it! I loved the whole "Journeying into the land of mists" storyline, loved the characters, particularly the new one, Alley, although I wasn't a fan of the "fdingin a flower to cure grandpa" storylin, "Grandma's lullaby", the mouse Tickles, and didn't really like the song "Who needs you". Overall, though, I loved it! It was just pure brilliance, was so magical and mysterious...oh yeah! I would watch it from time to time; for example, me, my sister and my cousin watched three episodes of "the little twins" and then Land Before Time 4 on the 4th of July, 1999. We watched it while waiting for the big fireworks show and after we came home from the show I think we finished it! It must have been the latest I ever stayed up! For a while it was pretty much the only one I knew. I had a story book of lbt, but the only pictures i remember was one of Cera's dad, cera and littlefoot, with Cera's dad telling her "Threehorns don't play w/ longnecks!" and one of Littlefoot, Ducky, Spike and petrie covered in tar and laughing at Cera. I saw part of 5 at my cousin's house in the summer of 1999, I think; from what I saw of it that day I didn't think it was as good as movie 4. I remember seeing them jump into the water and then spit it out, and three songs---one about the big water (i which the gang got grabbed by a bunch of seacreatures, with Littlefoot being grabbed by an octopus---which I thought fitting that our hero gets grabbed by the coolest creature there), and then a pretty one they were singing at night, and a rather bad "friends for dinner" one which took place in this grass and had this annoying "Chomper" and used "telephone" graphics. There's also another time I vividly remember watching 4. We'd only watch it occasionally, which was what made it so special. It was in sometime in 2000 and a few babysitters were over, and I remember complaining about Grandma's Lullaby, that it lacked a beat, and one of my babysitters humored me by tapping her knee. Well, we didn't finish watching it that night. My dad said we would in the morning, although we didn't end up doing it. I also saw a commercial for Stone of cold fire during Christmas of 2000 since it was on the Chicken Run VHS I got. I saw the scene with Cera having a halo and Petrie landing on her head.
It was in January 2001 that i saw it again. Ah, it was a grey sunday morning and my sister and I were watching cartoons as usual, I think we watched "Rolie Polie Ollie" that morning. And then my dad changed it to cartoon network. Now usually I didn't watch too much of cartoon network but guess what was on? Movie 5!It was at the pont where they were trying the green food on the island. So this time I knew what was coming, unlike the last where I don't think i even stayed to the end. And it did---they started singing "Big Water"! I loved it so much this time---espicially the climatic moment where they all became sea creatures!! Then there was the awesome scene where they were on the log being chased by the shark, and then, where they're singing on the beach at night...oh, my 6-year-old heart melted that day. Hardly any show was as special as LBT at that point in my life. Anyways, I left the room after that---I didn't want to ruin this perfect image--but came back upstairs to see they'd met up with Chomper and Ducky got kidnapped by a pteradactly. I really hated friends for dinner this time. As you all know, there was the huge Sharptooth fight, and Elsie taking them back to the mainland and their families. It was really great to see it that morning. The concluding shot of them returning to the great valley, along with the beautiful credits score, truly touched my heart. We later went out to the coast on that cold day.
It wasn't until spring 2002 that I really got into it though. On Easter we went to my cousin's house and guess what what I saw in the TV guide, which would be on that night on Cartoon network? "The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island". But we were watching The Little Mermaid 2 that night. Then the next morning, on Easter Sunday, I read in the TV guide that it would come on again! But I didn't get to see it. Well, it was a few weeks after that that Dad rented stone of cold fire and i enjoyed it. It was then i realized how frustrated i was that i didn't watch more LBT. (I remembered seeing the preview for stone of cold fire on the video for chicken run when I got it for Christmas 2000 and thinking the same thing. Part of the preview that stood out was a halo appearing above Cera's head and Petrie knocking it off. I was glad to see that was on this film.) So from may to July I watched a lot of LBT. Right after we rented 7 we rewatched 4, Dad soon rented 3 on a sunday, and me and my sister watched it on that sunny morning and i really liked it. As I watched it I couldn't help thinking about 5...ah, 5. I was gonna save renting 5, which i remembered fondly, for last. So we then got 6, which i thought at the time was good, but deep down knew it...was more kiddish then I wanted and wasn't quite LBT that I loved. At least it still had an interesting plot. 8 followed soon, and i didn't like it that much. It was bland and the formula was showing. It wasn't even that exiting. So much for an amazing, near-flawless series. Then it was 1. Geez, I did not see what happened in this one coming! Littlefoot's mom? I'd never even heard of her! The death was...really sad! And Littlefoot crying like that...but I didn't dwell on it or anything. But it's weird, it felt like a long lost LBT film to me, since the animation was so old and it was so much darker! So then we finally rented 5 (as well as 2, which I still had yet to see), which i hadn't even seen from he beginning. I waited all day for it in anticipation and exitement, savoring each moment building up to it. As a result it was a really fun day. Mom was in a run that morning, and me, my sister and my dad walked, disscusiing LBT and which ones we hadn't seen. We went home afterwards and me and my sister watched TV, and all that afternoon we had fun outside. A babysitter came that night and watched it with us. I finally got to see it from the beginning, with the leaf gobblers, everyone leaving the great valley, them getting to the island. In the end it was okay, but i realized it was mostly the first half I liked, and most stuff after the song "Always there" sucked. Once again I walked out after that song and I barely watched any of the 2nd half. I wasn't as touched by it as I was the last time. Well, what I'd been anticipating had come, so there wasn't much to look forward to. We watched 2 the next day but I wasn't really in an LBT watching mood, walking out during songs and not even staying for the last 15 or so minutes.
After that the LBT spark in my life quietly started to go out---I'd realized this film sries wasn't quite as good as I'd initially thought it was from mainly just seeing 4. 4 had seemed...so mysterious and special. Maybe not having Ali around made it less so. Or maybe it was seeing a lot of it at once that suddenly made it less special. Anyways the next time I saw it, my sister and i saw a some of "Stone of Cold fire" in a hotel in November 2002, on a saturday late in the afternoon. It was fun to watch it again after a bit. Also, I noticed from the captioning the Sarah's name was spelled..."Cera"? Huh? Then in February of 2003 guess what we got on VHS? "Journey to big water!" I was quite irratable about certain things in LBT at the time and kept leaving at points where i wanted. Such as during that stupid bit with Petrie's imaginary friend. And I didn't like Mo as much as i wanted to because...I just didn't like the name. Maybe it was cause I was older, maybe it was the CGI, maybe I just had had enough. And in the end though...I felt guilty cause it was a beautiful film overall and I hadn't been loyal to it and was rushing for it to end! But this was a film that shouldn't be rushed! And I should have loved Mo as much as I wanted to cause, well...not since Alley had we had a character in LBT this interesting. Now though, i enjoy it fully, and heck, i've basically associated the name Mo with this wonderful LBT character! Oh, and it's also the name of a pretty girl I know!
Well later that week mom got my sister "Time of the great giving" from the library, and she watched it, but i didn't really. And later that June, during a sleepover at my cousin's house, we watched the original land before time. And that pretty much ended my days with LBT. Or did it? I mean, i saw 2 and 7 on cartoon network at some point that year, and on christmas dad rented the new 10. I only poked my head in for a bit. I saw the song "Adventuring", Littlefoot and his grandparents crossing the swamp and meeting Sue, and Cera's nightmare. But we had to stop it and dad had to take it back before my sister could watch it all. I'd seen a bit and was disapointed Cera's dream about littlefoot being honored and covered in flowers wasn't real...so i told her, as dad was tucking her in "That's how it would have ended!" And my sister was like "No, it isn't!" and my dad was like, "Well you don't know that, maybe it was! Maybe littlefoot did get covered in flowers!" And i was happy cause i'd basically won this round. And to this day my sister doesn't know the truth.

Anyways, after being disapointed in the little bit of what i'd seen of 10, I wasn't really attracted to LBT at all anymore. I continued to occasionally encounter it---in June 2004 me and my family went to see my aunt and cousins in Montana. They had a VHS collection with all the LBT movies, and I was surprised to see the first one in a clamshell case. Before going to bed, one night, my cousin and I talked about the movies--we talked about the fight scene at the end of 6, which he reminisced about being seriously brutal, and we talked about Pterano, who I still a little confused about---was he bad or good? My cousin explained that he starts out bad, but turns good.
I saw a trailer for 11 in january 2005---and was just disgusted. Little longnecks? Uh...not for me! I was officially done with LBT! Then, later that year, I woke upm trying to recall the main theme for the LBT movies. And couldn't. It had just been too long. I thought maybe one was the one, but no, that was the theme from "Stranded". Huh. I also discovered this year that Alley's name was spelled...Ali? I didn't like that spelling cause it wasn't what I imagined and I think I lost a little respect for the character.
In late '05 I was at my grandparents house, it was close to new year's ad I saw 10 on tv; I watched the swamp scene and the part with Sue, maybe, and then the dream scene, which I'd forgotte was Cera's not Littlefoot's, oops
Then in February 2006 while waiting for the Narnia movie to start there was the music video for flip flap fly. At this point i never wanted to reutrn to LBT again and was horrified at this and wanted out! I was trapped! Trapped, I tell you, TRAAAAPED!!!
April 2007. While at a hotel my sister and i saw the shiny stones episode on tv. My sister made me stop to look at it cause Tria was there and she didn't know Cera had a mom. So i now knew there was a tv series with chomper...and, uh, miss pink. Yeah, i really missed Ali from way back in 4. I wanted her as member 7 instead of Ruby and was afraid ruby was gonna be littlefoots new girlfriend. Either way, though I was trying to convince myself at that point I was a big kid and didn't want LBT, I kept thinking about it, due to this and Jordan Sparks singing "If we hold on together" on American Idol, which brought back near tearjerking memories of the gang singing out the beach at night.
In November 2008 I Lwas flipping around on the net and googled "Littlefoot's dad", sice weirdly I remembered the old guy he met after his mom died in movie 1 as a longneck and bee speculatig that this might be his longlost father. Anyways I saw I remembered wrongly and that "Rooter" is...some creepy lookig kind of dinosaur. I also discovered (again, thanks to the net!) that littlefoot did ended up finding his dad in 10, which I hadn't seen in its etirety.. Who knew he'd show up? And that there was an LBT wiki. Interesting.
In August 2009 two little kids were over at my house and they were watching 4, which we owned, but I didn't watch any of it. All I heard from upstairs was a voice yelling, "Where are you...?" and it echoing
In January 2010, in science class, I began thinking of...Petrie. A cute little thing I'd barely thought about in years. Maybe it was partly cause there were these things called "petrie dishes" in science, but I found myself thinking about LBT a lot for a while. Just seeing a lunar halo in the night sky in January made me think of Cera's halo in movie 7. In may, I even looked up somethings about it online. I finally found out that the second song in LBT 5--where they're singing on the beach at night---was called "Always There". (Also, it was around this time that I got to know Mo, the cute girl I mentioned earlier.)
Then, this year, in February, Dad was wondering what the bird and the crocodile's names from the LBT we owned were. So he pulled it out and found out they were "Dil" and "Ichy". Geez, I didn't remember that! WEll, it was from this that I started to get interested in LBT again, and in late march, i finally got back into it fully. I started listening to the soundtrack for the movie one friday afternoon (March 25) after coming back from a run, and was really moved by it.
Two days later, I ended up finding this awesome new forum site, and a read review of the movies. Over the course of that week, I watched beautiful music videos for them like the "19 years of Land Before Time" video you made, Darkhououmon, read a beautiful fanfic called "Two from the past" (now lost, I'm afraid) and I even found out the names to each of the DVD movie scenes you can skip to. Some were good, although some I might retitle. I even watched the last 15 minutes of LBT 5 late on Friday, April 1st! (Not to mention a bit of the beginning of LBT 2, which was even better than I remembered! To make things even better, I was discovering some awesome music, like Michelle Branch's "Breathe". Life had been going rough for me since early that January, and this, combined with some great songs I'd found that I was gonna put on my mixed CD for my next birthday, was a pure oasis. During spring break in early April, we went on a trip to Disneyworld. It was a wonderful trip, as you can imagine, but this warm, happy, nostalgic feeling LBT had given me only made it better. All the way down to the airport and on the plane that night I dreamily thought about LBT, and continued to as I enjoyed the sun-kissed Florida. It was bittersweet, though, cause I had decided to put off watching it until I got my life back together. And what's really hard is I was seeing it everywhere---on the "Dinosaur" attraction, and in a beautiful picture in our hotel room that reminded me of the great valley. Eventually, a week after our return, I decided to go back to watching it. It was a friday, I'd had a great day at school, and it was grey and rainy---my favorite weather! I went for a nice run and decided to watch movie 2 that night. However, when I asked Mom and Dad, they asked which movie I'd be watching and I reluctantly admitted LBT, and Mom said no. Frustrated, I ended up browsing around on this forum all of Saturday and even watched some of the songs. I planned to watch 2 anyway after mom went to bed; I waited until she and Dad were finished watching a movie ("Black Swan"...very creepy) and was ready to rejoice when my annoying little sister told Mom what my new favorite show was. We had a nasty argument that resulted in me storming upstairs. The next day, however, things went pretty nicely.
I then held off watching it for three painful months. During Easter, we went down to my aunt and uncle's house and I was tempted to look at their copy of the original movie. My parents and aunt and uncle had gone out and my sister and I were alone for the night, and I watched Jeporady and an episode of Malcolm in the Middle. I also read some of "The Hunger Games" and listened to Roxette's "Look Sharp!" album. As the last track, "Listen to Your Heart", was playing, I decided to be a little naughty and showed my sister the copy of the DVD. She was at first like, "Where did u get that?!" and then teased me by saying "I know you like the little dinos, but that t-rex is a little too scary for you." I ran off downstairs (bumping my head) just as the adults came in. I managed to sneak the VHS back into the case without Mom noticing, though.
Anyways, as I said, holding it off, just when I'd gotten back into it, was painful. I was thinking about it all the time. I made it to the end of the school year (somehow) and started reading a book with a character named "Allie" in it. Eventually, my dad left to go see Grandpa in Florida, and my sister was gone a lot of the time, so it was pretty quiet, being just me and my mom. I occupied my time by reading, running, and going for bike rides; we had a nice 4th of July (my aunt, uncle, cousin and grandparents came for a barbeque the day before, and we watched the fireworks with a friend of my sisters) and and we even saw the midnight showing of the last Harry Potter movie in Canada, cause my Grandparents had gotten tickets. But I was itching so badly for LBT.
Well, the day before Dad came back I ended up going around on the archive versions of these forums---staying away from LBT related images, but getting relief from hearing something about the franchise. The next day, I finally decided I was going to watch them, and that night, after mom went to bed, I watched the first 30 minutes of movie 6. And I was all "eeeeeeeee!!!" on the inside. The next day I watched the rest of 6, in doses, secretly hiding what I was doing. That evening, I watched 10, and late that night (my mom was on a girl's weekend with my aunt) I watched 8. Later that week, on thursday night, I watched 9, (most of it---I'd started watching it in the morning) and the next day, I watched 5 in the middle of the day. We went to Silverwood park, in eastern WA (GORGEOUS scenery, btw) the next week and on the rollar coaster, I admit I was so exilerated that I scremed the lyrics to "Big Water" and "Bad Luck" at the top of my lungs. Anyways, I started watching MarzGurl's reviews ended up seeing Movie 7 I watched soon after we got back; I started watching it one night and finished it in the morning. I enjoyed it, too. Later, figuring it'd give me something to watch and to say I'd seen them, I watched 11 and 12---in the middle of the day on a friday (although I'd started 11 the previous day). Fianlly, to cap off the summer, I watched the original in the middle of the day on friday the 26.
Well, after that (I was still holding off watching 2-4 and wasn't going to soil my eyes with 13) the LBT spark in my life was at risk of going out. It just...wasn't really interesting me as much as it had. I even discovered, to my horror, that the beautiful fanfic I'd read last spring was gone.
And then in October I joined you guys.
And really, the rest is history. Joining this site was a decision I feel was really worth it. Suddenly, I could openly talk about LBT, something I'd been kinda alone in prior to. It was espicially great timing seeing as the month after I joined, the Harry Potter site I'd been a member of for no less then three and a half years shut down. So yeah, I'm so glad I'm here and part of the Gang of Five!
P.S. I ended up watching movie 2 again in December. But I really enjoyed it this time!

Also, on a friday in February I watched 4 (before dinner) and 3 later that evening. 4...wasn't as great as it was back on 4th of July 1999, but 3...that one left me really touched. It really is my favorite.
