a night out

I'm sure you're probably thinking, oh how wonderful - a night out for them.  But oh noooo, no, no.  A good learning experience though.

Let's start out by saying that there are some good restaurants around here.  GREAT barbeque.  The best is almost an hour away from where we live.  Coopers, it's called Coopers and it is amazing TX BBQ.  They even have a catchy jingle.

Bill had called me around 4pm and had mentioned that his boss was going to Coopers.  Ooh I thought and said, can we go?  Half joking because it was a wednesday night after all, and it was far away, but half salivating over the tastiest beef ribs and the creamiest of potato salads I had ever tasted.  Mmm.  At about 4:30pm Bill called back and said, do you really want go?  Why yes, I do want to go.  Oh did I mention that a trip to Coopers also means a trip to the Prime Outlets where one of my favorite retailers, Jcrew, rents space?  

Me: Do you think it's wisdom to go?  I mean it is wednesday, you have to work tomorrow...but it's not like the girls and I have any plans for tomorrow, we're practically on vacation.  Plus we're the parents, the kids can be flexible around our plans!  Yeah.  

Bill:  Yeah, I think it will be fine.  

So as you can tell, so far we have been persuaded by the lusts of gluttony & shopping.  While we were driving we should have known it was going to be a bad night because Claire spent most of the car ride practicing her high pitched squeals.  The kind that actually pain your ear drums and make you cringe.  She proceeded to do exactly that while we were in the restaurant eating.  We tried all sorts of things to distract her; food, toys, cell phones, water, etc.. Nothing worked.  We left in a hurry.  We got looks, all sorts of looks on the way out.  I tried my best to half-smile and walk out with some dignity and had wished I was wearing a t-shirt that read: I'm not a bad parent, really.  

For some reason we still thought it was a good idea to head to the outlet shops.  And I had fun.  We bought some pj's for the girls (on clearance!) and I managed to find a couple of things.  I thought it was time well spent :)  

The drive home proved to be a disaster.  We thought Claire would just conk out but rather she took turns between screaming and crying.  She was so over exhausted that she couldn't even fall asleep!  An hour later we arrived at home at 10pm, and that is when Sophie took her turn at whining before bed.  It was a full night.  We were all exhausted.

Thankfully we made it home, all alive. The girls went to bed & slept in the next morning.  Even I got to sleep in some.  Poor Bill actually had to get up and go to work.  Lesson learned here.  We are crazy, our kids are crazier.  Don't take them out to a restaurant an hour away (just because you're salivating over the food) on a Wednesday night!!!