Strategy

23/365

Most Friday nights we go out to dinner after Sophie's ballet lesson.  Games of eye spy and tic-tac-toe are our go-to saviors when patience gets low in restaurants.  Michael and Sophie are starting to think ahead a bit with their X's and O's and occasionally win legitimately--another sign that we probably eat out too much.

UPDATE:  Notice the little dinosaur in the foreground.  He was forgotten when we left the restaurant.  I calmed my heartbroken Michael with the story of leaving my Cabbage Patch doll in a McDonald's bathroom on a drive from Michigan to Pennsylvania when I was a kid.

"I set Quincy Thelma on the toilet paper holder in the bathroom stall.  Then as we were driving again on our vacation, I remembered I left her--"

"On the toilet paper!"  Michael and Sophie now love to add after requesting this story repeatedly over the last two days.

"On the toilet paper.  When we finally made it back to that restaurant many days later on our way back home, I asked the lady at the counter if she had seen my doll, and she said, 'This one?' holding up Quincy Thelma.  The only thing different about her was--"

"She smelled like french fries!"

"She smelled like french fries."

When Mike presented Michael with his little dinosaur again today, he immediately held him up to his nose and said, "He smells like french fries!"  He smelled more like tortilla chips to me, but I was touched that my story resonated with him.