Special Dinners

John was out of town all last week. He left Monday morning and didn't get back until Friday. I was alone with all four kids by myself without any backup for 5 days! It was a tough week!

It went well though. We did a lot of "special" dinners that included cereal, pop tarts, eggs, and jelly sandwiches. As a matter of fact I think that we had a vegetarian week here without Daddy around. We didn't miss our meat one bit!

We also got to watch Dora while we ate last week, since it was a special privilege for kids that listened in the shower. Everybody listened in the shower. Nobody pushed or dumped water on anybody else. Everybody brushed their teeth and didn't complain. And everybody quietly put their jammies on by themselves so that we didn't wake Shane up.

Bribery works!

On Thursday afternoon Wyatt told me that he wanted to do something special for dinner and go to a restaurant. I agreed and asked him where he wanted to go. He said the Chicken Store (Chick Fil A), so we packed everybody up and went out to dinner.

I think that was the first time that I have ever taken all 4 kids out to dinner by myself! It went well. Except for the part where I was ordering and the 16 year old girl behind the corner kept asking me what meal I wanted. "If you are getting the nuggets and fries, but not the pop, then you should get the kids value meal, but then you will have to pay extra for the juice boxes. Do you want that? Or do you want the number 2 with an extra fry instead and then pay for 3 separate boxes? Or, do you want 2 number 2 meals with 6 nuggets only that will add up to 12 nuggets and only pay for 1 juice box, but have an extra fry?".

Meanwhile the kids were LOADING up on condiments from the condiment counter. They were stuffing packets of ketchup in their pockets, pulling out hundreds of napkins, and unwraping straws by the handful.

The manager overheard the commotion and came to the register just in time to hear me say "All I want is 12 nuggets, 2 fries, and 3 juice boxes. However you make it happen is fine with me, just make it happen quickly!". The manager was incredibly helpful and got us all set up at a table with our food within minutes. She even checked on us a couple of times while we were eating. She may have been trying to figure out where we were hiding all of their condiments since the kids were opening ketchup at the speed of light. Their ratio was 1 packet of ketchup per 2 fries. I decided that it was fine since they were getting their one serving of vegetables after all!

But now John is back and the kids were thrilled to see him. Sam and John are BFF's. Sam likes John almost as much as Jonah likes me! It's shocking!

We attempted to take a Christmas picture outside today for our Christmas card, but I'm not thrilled with the results. John told me that my hair looked like a helmet in the picture. It did. So we will try again tomorrow if it is nice outside. We did get a couple of cute ones of the boys though....