Check, PLEASE!!!!!!

I LOVE TO COOK!!

I'm not talking your standard "Hamburger Helper" or Tuna Casserole kind of cooking, either.

I like to spend my whole afternoon in the kitchen looking at a basic recipe and "improvising" along the way just to see how FANTASTIC I can really make it.

Alas.....as with everything else in my life that I truly enjoy doing JUST FOR ME....

the kiddos have sucked the fun right out of it!!!

Don't get me wrong, I still love cooking, just NOT when all I hear after putting it on the table is, 

"EWWWW.....what's that?!?!"

"I don't LIKE chicken!" (Really? You couldn't get enough of it last time!)

"I want Peanut Butter and Jelly!"

So, I end up eating all the fruits of my labor by myself........FOR THE NEXT WEEK!!!!

So, now that I am stuck trying to cook in another person's kitchen (without all my "go to" gadgets and ingredients), I decided that it might actually be more fun and less of a hassle to dine out more often......

I must have hit the cooking wine pretty hard before making this decision because it was completely STUPID!!

Well, the 4 kiddos and I headed out to dinner tonight.

(4 kids+2 hands=PAIN IN THE FLIPPING A$$!!!!)

Soooo....here are the highlights of my "break" from cooking for the family:

 

1. Oh, Good Lord, NO!! We've eaten here before, so it's a 2 on 2 battle over whether or not we need to eat at the SAME table or a NEW one!!! Where the HE!! is the "Please Wait to be Seated" sign when I need it?!?!

2. Trying to be "budget friendly", I order water with lemon for everyone. Well, I tell the kiddos that it's "lemonade", so why does the waitress INSIST on trying to confirm the drink order FOUR times....when they DON'T EVEN HAVE LEMONADE?!?!?!

3. We order an appetizer.....an absolute MUST for trying to salvage your sanity with kids!!! The plate of fries comes....seriously, folks?!?!? Why on earth do you deliver a piping hot plate of fries (yes...even the PLATE was too hot to touch!) to a woman sitting alone with 4 young children?!?!? So, we spend the next 5 minutes just STARING at our food waiting for it to cool down enough to eat!

4.  FOOD COMES!!!! Gotta love a place where you can order pizza for the kids and something healthy for Mommy!!! EXCEPT when your nephew happens to work in the kitchen!!! (don't you just LOVE small towns?!?!) My nephew (bless his heart, he was trying to be helpful) decided to cut all of the kids' pizza slices into bite size pieces. Ummm...yeah...you OBVIOUSLY don't have kids, yet!!! The Ref and the Instigator decided that pizza is NOT meant to be eaten piece by piece!!! I totally agree....but is it REALLY worth the argument with the innocent waitress?!?!?  BTW....the Princess just REFUSED to eat it altogether!

5. I am smarter than the average bear!!! I learned a long time ago that eating ANYTHING with kids means that I will be eating a cold meal!!! So I decided to outsmart the laws of parenthood years ago!! The only thing I order when going out to eat......SALAD!!!!! It's a BRILLIANT idea!! By the time you cut stuff for them, take away the knives (BTW.....why can't family restaurants make SEPARATE sets of utensils WITHOUT knives for young kids?), blow on their forks, "unspill" their drinks, and pry the flipping crayons from their death grips.......your food will be cold anyway!!!! 

I won't even MENTION the fact that the Bean decided that pizza is better on her HEAD, or that she will eat Ranch Dressing as if it's SOUP!!!

So.....the next time I try to venture out and "make it easy on myself"....

PLEASE remind me that eating leftovers for the next week is actually GOOD for your stress level!!!