Dining-with-kids
Date Night
February/04/2010 10:23 AM Filed in: Humor | Husbands | Couples | Nicole Hanratty | Life of a Rock Star
Date Night
By Nicole Hanratty
When it comes to date night, I feel just like the kid in Sixteen Candles whose parents are pushing him into the high school dance as he’s resisting, “I wanna go home. I wanna be with you guys!” Only in our scenario, it’s the kids pushing us out the front door because the babysitter is way more fun, as is our house without Mom and Dad. But it is the one night of the week when my husband and I know we get to walk away from the house, leave our concerns behind—hypothetically—and enjoy an adult dinner at a nice restaurant (sans the overpriced penne pasta with butter).
Ironically, dining alone seems to produce record speed service in even the finest of dining establishments. The beverages, bread and appetizer seem to appear within minutes of us being seated and the waiter stands eager by our tableside to take our entrée order. If we bring children to the same restaurant, it could be twenty minutes before we see a morsel of bread or a sip of water, which produces grumpy, hungry and restless kids. Likely the entire ordeal will take a full two hours—I have always postured that they must have to run to the market and buy the mac n’ cheese to make for the kiddies—with us paying $25.00 per bowl of cheesy noodles and wishing we had just gone to CPK which the kids were begging for in the first place. However when the hubby and I show up alone ready to relax and enjoy a fully pampered three-course two-hour meal, we are in and out in fifty-five minutes flat. Read More...
By Nicole Hanratty
When it comes to date night, I feel just like the kid in Sixteen Candles whose parents are pushing him into the high school dance as he’s resisting, “I wanna go home. I wanna be with you guys!” Only in our scenario, it’s the kids pushing us out the front door because the babysitter is way more fun, as is our house without Mom and Dad. But it is the one night of the week when my husband and I know we get to walk away from the house, leave our concerns behind—hypothetically—and enjoy an adult dinner at a nice restaurant (sans the overpriced penne pasta with butter).
Ironically, dining alone seems to produce record speed service in even the finest of dining establishments. The beverages, bread and appetizer seem to appear within minutes of us being seated and the waiter stands eager by our tableside to take our entrée order. If we bring children to the same restaurant, it could be twenty minutes before we see a morsel of bread or a sip of water, which produces grumpy, hungry and restless kids. Likely the entire ordeal will take a full two hours—I have always postured that they must have to run to the market and buy the mac n’ cheese to make for the kiddies—with us paying $25.00 per bowl of cheesy noodles and wishing we had just gone to CPK which the kids were begging for in the first place. However when the hubby and I show up alone ready to relax and enjoy a fully pampered three-course two-hour meal, we are in and out in fifty-five minutes flat. Read More...
