Sunday...when I should be sleeping

I should be sleeping. Tonight I told myself, and Brian, that I was going to bed early. So it is 11pm and I am still up, so why not blog. I am hopelessly behind on blogging, so thought I could at least blog tonight and hope to finally get back to blogging from June and July.

If you don't live near me or have not been to my house within the past 2 weeks, you probably don't know that we just underwent a MAJOR landscaping undertaking. It took 2 weeks of guys working full days and lots of heavy equipment. But, we finally have grass, not weeds. Our lower deck was nearly overtaken by weeds, so we thought it was time. We also thought our neighbors would appreciate walking on the sidewalk by our property without being attacked by weeds, so now we have a really big lawn, and if you saw our lawn before, it wasn't exactly small. Brian may finally get his riding mower, because a push mower on our new lawn is definitely cruel and unusual punishment. All in all, the landscaping looks good, but now we wait and see how the grass takes. So the point of the blog, today we went looking for patio furniture, since we soon will be able to have people over on our back decks. End of summer, so it was slim pickings, but if you like what is left, you can get it for a great price. We are still deciding. Anyway, still not the point of the blog. While walking into the store, I casually said to Brian, "Let's go out for dinner?" I was SHOCKED when Brian said, "Yea, let's do it, I was thinking the same thing." For most people, going out to dinner with your kids is no big deal, I feel guilty about this, but we do not. EVER! At dinner, which we went to Red Robin, because if we are going to dinner, we will only good to a super kid friends place, Brian and I realized that we have not gone out to dinner as a family by ourselves since I was pregnant with Anders. Even then, we think the only time we ate out was on our Seattle trip when I was 5 months pregnant, of which I think we got take out every night. So not even sure when the last time we ate out as a family. Well over a year. In our defense, we do not eat out very often period. Brian and I do date night every week, and many of those nights we don't actually go out to eat, we run errands or stay home. We do eat out with the kids when we are with extended family, but only because we have to and because there are extra hands with the kids. We just don't believe in spending money to be miserable the whole time.

Anyway, so here we are at Red Robin and I decided to take pictures to mark the momentous occasion. Brian cracked up and said we looked so pathetic, taking pictures like it was the first time we have been in a restaurant - in a way it kind of was. The first 30 minutes went well, so well that I thought, "Why don't we do this more often." Then the kids we know and love reared their monstrous heads and the last 10 minutes were torture, and we could not pay the bill fast enough. Anders was eating, so happy, no problems there. Myann was eating spoonfuls of ketchup, but hardly touched her corn dog. Then she takes the bitten, slathered with ketchup corn dog and runs it all over the glass separating us from the next table. She won't eat, is standing and being a pain. Shane sees her getting all the attention, nevermind that it was negative attention, so he decides to misbehave by climbing under the table and going back and forth side to side. At which point I told him he just lost his dessert. Myann had already lost her chance at dessert, but she could have cared less. Shane cared and went into meltdown mode. Finally check came and we were out of there. I know, nothing catastrophic happened and they are not the world's worst kids, though hardly the best, but why spend extra money to be annoyed and miserable in public. No thanks, next time I will cook and deal with our kids in the privacy of our own home.