We Have a New First!

We actually went out and had a family dinner!!! This may be hard to believe but we have never taken the boys to a restaurant for a meal together. It started off just because of the food allergies, and then the last time we went out with Cooper (while I was pregnant with Bear) he screamed the entire time because he wanted to eat what we were eating. It was mortifying enough we have not repeated the experience. Mostly we feel bad saying look what we can eat but you can't have any!

We traipsed the boys around again today to a new mall. It was a carpeted mall ya'll. You know there is some money up in there. It was by far the nicest mall I've ever been in. They have this huge play area and the machines take .75 cents not .50 like the one near us. I guess this part isn't relevant to the dinner story......

So we got home and Jim took a nap. Not 20 minutes into his nap we had a massive power outage in the area. The boys hadn't had any tv all day and were excited to have a show on. The power goes off and Coop was not a happy camper. He was bringing me the remote begging for tv. He had no idea what a power outage was and really didn't want to hear it. So I tried my best to entertain them while clearing out more stuff in their room to sell on Craigs List I can not believe how many clothes we had for 12 months! Two huge bags full. Again not really relevant to the dinner story guess I am just feeling chatty tonight...

So Jim finally wakes up and tries to entertain them with legos but they decide about 4:30 they are hungry and they get very very fussy. We open our now warm refrigerator and see we have nothing prepared and have nothing to give them except fruit.

We start to brainstorm. I swear you would have thought this was the biggest decision we'd ever made. If only we planned other things in our life this well! We first decided to go to a Chinese place and get them the garlic and broccoli we know they've eaten off of us before. But what if they don't do well in the restaurant? Maybe we should get it to go and eat it at the mall where there is always noise? We decide (after painstaking debate) to go to the restaurant and if they act up get it to go and head to the mall. But Jim's concerned we don't have plates there. I figure someone else will give us some if need be. So we pull into the parking lot and Jim says, "Well you know we could go to a buffet and that way we could have choices." That sounds like a good idea so off we go. We head in one direction and I come up with the Mongolian restaurant we went to many moons ago on a date night where we could pick all the food and add our own spices and sauces- it's like me cooking right? So Jim turns the car in the opposite direction. We get there and we see a Chinese place and figure ok they don't like the Mongolian then we come here and order Chinese. Sigh- this is a lot of stress!

I'm really sorry because I've made this story so much longer than it needed to be. We get there and they have this huge mirror and we pull out their toys. They had a blast. They took turns making funny faces at the mirror and playing with their toys. They downed the nasty tap water and ate with flourish the broccoli/cabbage/tomato/zucchini stir fry with sweet ginger sauce. We had to get them two servings and Cooper wouldn't leave until his last piece of broccoli was gone and all of his water was done. They never fussed, only charmed the waitress. Who knew??

Did a drive by the apartment and saw the power was back on shortly after we left. So probably by the time we'd actually decided where to go the power was back on but it was actually a lot of fun and a little bit freeing. There were no allergic reactions. We expected a bit of rambunctiousness from the sugar in the sweet ginger sauce but they got home watched a show and both fell asleep quickly and quietly.