We try to take the kids out for dinner a few times a month. It’s a nice change of pace, it gives everyone a break from my cooking and it gives us a chance to teach our monsters how to behave in public. Most of the time, dinner out is a great way to spend the evening together without being distracting by the phone, the dishes or the dog.

And then you have nights like tonight.

The kids and I arrived to Friendly’s first- the Hubs was meeting us after working out.  Scorch had had a meltdown in the car on the way over, but had pulled it together before we got inside.  The kids were doing fine- coloring, drinking their milk and generally behaving themselves.  And then the Hubs showed up.

No idea why, but this caused both kids to just lose it.  Both wanted to sit with me.  Scorch, who ended up sitting next to the Hubs for the meal, sobbed the entire time pleading to come sit on my side.  I felt terrible for the Hubs who just wanted a nice dinner with us and I felt badly for Scorch because this is just not how he normally acts so something was out of wack.  In all the craziness, the Bean managed to knock over my soda onto my lap, so I spent 75% of the meal in wet, sticky pants with my shoes stuck to the floor.

Our poor server had no idea what to do and brought us our to-go cartons about 2 minutes into our meal in the hopes, I would imagine, that we’d get the hell out of there before people started complaining.  We took the hint, packed our food up and left before it got worse.

On the way home, I had a long talk with Scorch about how he hurt the The Hubs feeling by not wanting to sit next to him. This prompted round #2348 of sobbing with Scorch saying we didn’t love him anymore.  The best part though was the Bean. During all the sobbing, Beaner was laughing her head off screaming “I love you, Mommy!! and you love me!!”  Scorch was not amused, although I was.

Thank God for bedtime. And the to-go ice cream we got from Friendlys.