The Riverside Grill

Tonight we had quite the interesting experience at dinner. Suzy had previously purchased a restaurant.com certificate for a place called, "Riverside Grill". Which was a restaurant inside the Doubletree Inn. You know it was going to be classy. With the restaurant.com gift certificate you have to spend a certain amount to get the 50% off.

I should have suspected something when I called, and asked if we needed a reservation and the girl on the other end of the phone said "No, we're not very busy." I thought, well, at least then there will be no one to hear our kids make noise (by kids I mostly mean Jace, who is very loud these days).

We arrive, and by no one to hear Jace yell, I mean NO ONE. There was one other group at the far end of the eating area. The waitress brings the menus. Which we later compare and notice have different prices on them for each item. We ask the waitress if there's a kids menu. Her response? "I don't know, let me ask." Hmmm...she doesn't know if they have kids menus?
Later on, after we have the kids menus, and have asked her for a high chair for Jace we ask if the kids meals come with drinks.
Courtney (her name), "I don't know." Not, let me find out. Just I don't know. You'll notice a theme here.
"Do the entrees come with a side?"
Courtney "I don't know."
Can I get some kind of cup that Jace can drink out of?
Courtney "Sure" (never brings it)
I go up and ask for a paper cup. To her credit, she did give me a straw that I didn't ask for.

Turns out it was her first night working there. We also figured that she was probably home schooled (no offense of course) and had never been out to eat. Or had a job.

She brought out the desserts (we had $10 more that we needed to use up before the discount hit). There were two platters of desserts. We started asking, what is that one?
Courtney "I don't know"
Finally, I think she realized that "I don't know" is not really the response someone is looking for. I had just pointed to one and asked if it was some kind of Ice Cream/custardy thing. Courtney "No, maybe Bread with frosting."
We finally asked her to go find out what the deserts were. After she came back, she was able to fill us in (it was a lemon custard type desert by the way).

She brought us the bill. It was about 1/3rd of what it should be. We should have just left it at that, but we mentioned that to her and 20 minutes later they finally brought us the correct, much more expensive bill. With no thanks for pointing out that they had almost let us go for pennies on the dollar. Or at least 33.3cents on the dollar.

We realized that this was not entirely Courtney's fault, since it appears that the other two workers there weren't giving her much direction (despite her obviously home schooled past, again, no offense. I was home schooled. Which isn't saying much, and that probably just gave home schoolers more offense than anything else which I've written).

Also, the Caesar Salad I ordered came with a side of Sour Cream and Chives. And cherry tomatoes. And some really soft croutons.

I was also surprised that Jace's corn dog (yes, we ordered a vegetable dish for him (corn) since we're helping him eat not just what he wants, but also super healthy) wasn't too hot. I thought that was weird, since usually you have to let that kind of thing cool off. Turns out it was still cold inside. Luckily hot dogs are fully cooked, so we just went with it.

After about half way through, we just started enjoying the experience for the experience's sake. We were laughing quite a bit. Poor Courtney. And poor Riverside Grill (Inside the Riverside/Doubletree Inn). Anyway, it was worth it just for the laughs.

Patience

At Church on Sunday, one of Faith's teachers came up and let me know that she'd said the prayer that day in class. Some of her prayers are pretty funny. She'll start randomly looking around the room and include things she sees in the prayer (we're still working on the whole close your eyes while you pray thing). I was quite interested to hear what he had to say about it.
What did she pray for? At least the part he remembered? That her parents would have more patience.

Suzy was playing the piano at Mutual on Wednesday night. Turns out someone naughty had gotten a hold of a Marker and written some not very nice things on the piano keys (one letter on each key). At first Suzy thought "That's cute, someone wrote the musical notes on the keys so they can find them". Then, once she really looked at it, it was more of an "Oh My Word!" kind of thing. Anyway, she then asked the young men's president to get one of the young men to find something to clean it off. Later, that young man came up to her and said, "Sorry you had to see those words written on the keys." Suzy was quite impressed with his consideration, and expressed her thanks.
Then he finished his thought, "Yeah, Brother Johnson was wondering if that was the reason you were having such trouble with the song."

Are kids great. And honest. Sometimes. When they probably shouldn't be.

foodies

I didn't get home until fairly late last night, so I missed dinner with the family. Suzy filled me in though. She made yummy tortilla soup. The kids had some interesting reactions.
1) Jace, who is super picky loved it. He is learning how to eat by himself (okay, so sometimes we let him eat by himself, I don't know how much actual learning occurs). He even asked for a second bowl (although we should have made him finish the first bowl, which was mostly on his clothes).
2) Faith said, "Yeah mommy! I love soup!" and then ate 2 bites and declared she was done.
3) Kate threw a hissy fit. She REFUSED to eat such disgusting food. Suzy took her food away and let her know when she was ready to be grateful, she could have it back. She spent the next 10 minutes going through various "constipated" expressions as she tried so hard to force those hated words out of her mouth, but just couldn't do it. Finally, after much drama, she expressed her thanks. Then proceeded to lick the bowl clean and ask for more.

Poor Suzy, she has to deal with these kinds of situations almost on a daily basis. I just don't know where these kids could have gotten their pickiness.

Santa

Kate is just on the cusp of not believing in Santa. We do a tradition called Elf on the Shelf (many of you may have heard of it). Anyway, there's this cute little elf, included with a book. The Elf magically moves around each night to a different location, where he will watch the kids. At night is when he goes and reports to Santa on how the kids were that day.

This year, Kate was asking "Is McGiggle (his name) real?" (As she looks very closely at his face) "His face looks like plastic to me"
Suzy, "I don't know, what do you think?"
Kate, "Well, he moves around at night, so I guess he's real."

Suzy often does this (avoids the subject at this point).

We were watching some Christmas movie (I can't remember what it was) and the parents were filling the kid's stockings. Kate pipes up, "Why are the parents filling their stockings and not Santa?"

Anyway, here's a picture of the plate of goodies that Santu was left. He sure enjoyed them, in fact the only thing that was left was part of a marshmallow. Which Jace ate while we were opening presents.

Fun Christmas Sweaters

Suzy recently raided her Mom's stash of special Christmas Sweaters. She wore one of them to Church. They all have super fun designs. She wore one that had matching sweater pants to our Ugly Christmas Sweater party. Some of the others have fun things, like snowman buttons, or jingle bells. Also, included is a picture of Faith in a fun Christmas sweater.

Happy New Year!

Yeah! It's the first blog post of 2012! I was on my way home from work, asking Suzy about her day. She's been working on taking down the Christmas decorations, which means she hasn't been able to keep an eagle eye on the Children like usual. Which lead to her wondering why Jace had stopped following her everywhere and whining for her to hold him. Turns out he'd found something else to entertain himself for a short period of time.

He was in the living room pulling bread out of a baby wipes box. Which may lead you to ask the question, how did bread get into a baby wipes box.

The answer? Apparently Faith had put it there. All the bread from a new loaf. Why you may ask? Your guess is as good as mine. For some reason it seemed like a good idea at the time. but really, WHY!!!!

Further in the phone call, this happened,
Mike "So Suz, what else happened today."
Suzy "Well, I got quite a bit done on taking down...uh oh"
Mike, "WHAT! ARE YOU OKAY??? ARE YOU BEING ATTACKED BY GIANT TIGER ALIENS FROM VENUS? WHAT IS IT?"
Suzy (obviously not talking to me, nor paying attention to my urgent pleas for information) "Okay, who wiped ANOTHER booger on the wall!"
Suzy "Kate, come up here and clean this up now."
Mike, "Uh...should I let you go?"
Suzy (with a regretful tone, back to listening to me again) "probably"

Needless to say, this was one of the days I was happy that I don't spend 97.84% of my time with the kids. Who I dearly love, and love to see, but I also enjoy doing other things at times. One reason I'm very, very Grateful for Suzy. Despite days like this, she loves being a Mom.

ps - Faith fell out of a chair again today. Kate and Faith are going to love it when I show this post to future boyfriends.