How to Have a Pleasant Dining Experience

So we decide to go out to dinner.

I had a meeting to go to and didn’t get back until after five…I don’t really feel like starting dinner so late…I don’t have anything thawed….

All right, all right, enough excuses! I’m LAZY and I want to go OUT! Is that so terrible?

So to justify the whole thing I want to pick a “kids eat free” place.

First I go to kidseatfree.com. Yes, that is a real website. No, there is no free food on it.

In fact, it’s not very helpful. For Hawaii it only gives the names of hotels where kids are free. Because everyone in this state is on vacation I guess!

(See my previous rant [“Crib Tents I Love Thee”] on how Hawaii is still PART OF THE UNITED STATES, PEOPLE!)

So I just check some restaurant websites because I think I remember someone around here having a kids eat free promotion going on.

And there it is! It’s IHOP!

So off we go.

Now, let me just say, when a family of seven enters a restaurant, especially when included in that number is a pair of toddlers, the noise level in the place goes up two or three notches right off.

And that’s just walking IN!

So we finally get ourselves all seated.

Hostess: You need TWO highchairs?

Me: Um, yes. There‘s TWO babies here!

By the way, we didn't actually GET two highchairs. we got a highchair and a booster seat. Here's Baby Girl bouncing on the seat, filled with glee over her freedom.

Baby Boy didn't care much for the situation.

Then we have to get everyone to order.

That seems like such a simple proposition, doesn’t? Well, it isn’t.

Waitress: Can I get you guys something to drink?
Me: I’ll have a diet coke and two milks for the babies.
My Husband: I’ll have water.
ET: (looking up briefly from texting and using the minimum words possible) Diet coke. (going back to texting)

Pause. Silence. Waitress looks expectantly at the children.

Me: (sigh) Boo, what do you want to drink?
Boo: (something unintelligible)
Me: What?
Boo: (whispers to me) Hot chocolate.
Me: (to waitress) She’ll have hot chocolate.

Pause. Silence. We all look at GG.

Me: (sigh) GG, what do you want to drink?
GG points to the menu.
Me: No, not what do you want for dinner; what do you want to DRINK?

GG gets out the menu again. I am briefly distracted by Baby Boy shrieking for no apparent reason (maybe he's still mad over being the only twin stuck in a highchair) and when I come back to the conversation the waitress is walking off.

Me: Did you ever order a drink, GG?

GG shoves the menu towards me and points again. She has ordered some specialty drink called “Minionade,” one of their promotions from the movie “Despicable Me.” It’s just like lemonade, only twice as expensive, with a cool name and something sprinkled on top.

Way to slip one by Mom there, kid.

Here's a photo of Boo drinking the Minionade. Yep. GG didn't even FINISH it!

Ordering food progresses in much the same way, with the added twist of the waitress thinking I want a kids’ meal instead of an adult meal. Maybe because there are so many kids.

Or maybe because I ordered the chicken fingers.

Hey, you don’t have to be a kid to love chicken fingers!

The food comes in a fairly timely manner and we continue to be our noisy selves. Baby Boy and Baby Girl shriek intermittently. The kids engage in their usual dinnertime activities: insulting each other, making rude noises, and occasionally attempting to use each other for footstools.

And these are GIRLS! I can’t imagine what a bunch of sons would be like!

The nice quiet (normal) family at the next table is starting to look as if they’d like to flee.

We are seated in an oversized booth with parents on the outside, so OF COURSE every child in the family has to get up to use the bathroom. Some of them twice.

Boo tries the climb-under-the-table technique of getting out of the back of a booth, popping up in the aisle in front of a lady heading for the door, who jumps in surprise.

Then after the poor woman was nearly frightened to death by a kid rising from the floorboards, she trips and nearly falls over the shoe Baby Boy had flung into the aisle.

Here's a photo of Baby Boy chuckling over the whole thing.

Yes, we can really enhance everyone’s dining experience when we go out.

By the time we are (finally) ready to go, I think the manager was reconsidering that “kids eat free” promotion.

I mean, are we REALLY the kinds of people the restaurant wants to attract?

Oh, by the way, here's GG in the car on the way home.

I forgot to take her picture in the restaurant. Because she was in the bathroom. Again.

Girls!