Why We Eat At Home

I LOVE going out to eat. I really, really do. I don't have to cook, I don't have to clean up - someone else serves me - it's great. We haven't been doing it much lately mostly do to budget restaints - at home I can feed us for less then $10 - while eating out can run us up to $60 or more for one meal! Yikes!

So, tonight we had a gift card and we had to go to BJ's so we decided to go out to eat before we shopped. What a disaster!

We had a twenty minute wait - not a disaster - not a big deal. Of course, we're asking to seat 7 people during "rush hour" so I knew it would be a wait.

After a bit over 20 minutes we are paged to our table. Great, we are all starving! They bring us to our table and there are 5 chairs. Hmmm, who gets to stand? We ask about the 3 high chairs we requested. What? You need 3? Um, yes, we have 3 toddlers. They tell us they'll look for them. I ask if in the meantime we could have chairs!!

They do manage to find us one highchair, I found the other - they never once remembered the third.

We ordered our drinks after waiting a good ten minutes or so for a waiter. I ordered a coke, I got a water. The girls got their chocolate milk finally - thank God, that helped with the whining. We did get some great bread which also helped.

We placed our food order after another long wait. The kids got their food - again after a long wait. That was fine - Julianna actually liked the raviolis :) But our food hadn't shown up. The manager comes out to tell me that my pork is still frozen, it will be a while longer and did I want anything else? I changed my order to raviolis since we'd already been sitting there around an hour. I also re-ordered my soda.

Somehow this really didn't expedite anything. The manager came out again. They had run out of lasagna and did Kirk want anything else on his trio meal. He ended up with 2 chicken parmigans.

We request the kids desserts to be brought out while we're eating. We were hoping some ice cream would keep them calm while we ate. No ice cream. We now order it through the waitress - both the manager and the waitress offer us 5 kids desserts even though we were only "eligible" for three.

In between our waits the waitress wants to know if the kids sitting at the table are all ours. We assure her that they are and that yes, the three girls are triplets. No, we didn't plan for them. No, they don't run in our family. Yes, there may be a special part of heaven reserved for me but I really doubt it.

Kirk and I finish our meals. The waitress shows up with 5 ice creams. Yes, the ice creams we had hoped the kids would eat while we ate. We ask for the check figuring it would take just as long to pay as it had to eat.

They brought us the check - the manager then comes and says he'll make a correction and take a meal off. But the bill comes back more then the first time. We are so confused and tired and just wanting to leave - after all we still had to shop at BJ's! So, finally after 2 hours of waiting and sitting and controlling 3 two-year olds who did surprisingly well and 2 big kids who played DS and drew on the table cloth (maybe you know where we are by now?), the manager brings us a bill for $32.

So, the bill wasn't bad - $40 for 5 meals (the triplets still split since none of them eat much) plus some ice cream. They were quite happy to inform us that we still had money left on our gift card and to please come back and see them again soon.

Kirk and I both agreed that that won't be happening! I understand waitressing is a tough job and they were quite busy but for that moment I wished the waitress could sit in my shoes as I tried to keep three toddlers happy. If there had been that chance I can bet you she would've moved quite a bit faster to be sure we were all fed.

So, tomorrow, I'm staying in.