After weathering the "storm" last night (seriously...I've seen worse rain & wind than that in your run-of-the-mill thunderstorm), my girlfriends and I went to cash in our free lunch invites at the new Chili's. (We were given them to help train the new employees before opening. All we had to pay was the tip! SCORE!). But if you're thinking to yourself "Oh, how nice! Girls Afternoon Out! Sounds like fun!" , please, stop right there and continue reading.
It was not just the three of us. OH NO. Between us, there are 9 (yes, I said NINE) kids. I have my three monkeys, Carinna has two boys (5 and 8) and Caroline has four kiddos (twin 7 yr olds, a 6 yr old and an almost 5 yr old). We. Had. Them. All. And no daddy's were around...my hubby is still in Alabama until Monday night, Caroline's hubby is in the desert for 4 months, and Carinna's hubby just had knee surgery and is living on their bed for the next month. You should have seen the looks of pure terror on the faces of every single Chili's employee as we walked in together in a sea of children. Classic.
They had to push 3 tables together so that we could all sit near each other (they originally wanted to split us up between two tables...clear across the room from each other. Um...NO.), and they had two servers taking our orders. Of course all the boys (there were 7 of them) had to go to the bathroom at once. I walked them all over and kept sticking my head in the door of the men's room to tell them to stop goofing around and hurry up. I almost died laughing when I heard almost-5-yr-old Austin saying "Jonah! Come pee next to me, Pal! They have the stand up potties!"
At times during our lunch I felt like a freak-show. Three moms and nine children, who are by no means quiet-even my 15 month old daughter was making noise!!-trying to have a nice lunch. Puh-leez! I was feeling frazzled and trying to hurry my kids up so that I didn't ruin anyone else's lunch (that's the worry-wart/people pleaser in me). But apparently the three of us were doing something right, because both servers, and the family next to us (they had small twin boys) all said how they gave us so much credit for taking them all out and handling all the kids without the stern voices of the dads helping out. And when you're a military wife who has to do the single-parent act alot, it's nice to know that people are somewhat impressed with your momma skills.
If you can survive kids, you can survive anything.
