My not so "Cinco De Mayo"

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, right?  Well, I am trying to take that approach to my life because I have realized that I have allowed a little too much negativity to creep in.  So, I am finding joy in the journey and learning to laugh a little more when life doesn't go as planned. So, this is the story of my night tonight, I want to record it for me.  It definitely was better experienced than explained - so forgive me if you don't find it as entertaining as I did. It was a night to remember.

Tonight Clint came to me and said, "Hey Babe, Cinco De Mayo - should we go to a Mexican Restaurant?" I thought about it for a minute because it would mean taking the kids out to a restaurant and I felt like I had been fighting them tooth and nail to get their chores done this afternoon, and rewarding them with a restaurant dinner was a little much. However, this mama chose to get laundry done today instead of anything else and honestly - I hardly think about dinner ahead of time, so I agreed to go to a restaurant because I didn't have anything planned to make.  

We drove away, but first threatened our kids that if they fought in the car, we would drive them back home and they could eat cereal and Clint and I could go on a date. I was really looking forward to that date, but I am happy to say, we made it to the restaurant without any drama in the car. 

We walked into the restaurants crammed little entry with people on both sides and 20 people piling out before us to put our name on the list.  The hostess said the wait was 60 minutes and Clint put our name down, then I looked at her and said, 60 or 16 minutes? As if someone would say 16 minutes on a wait time, but you never know.  The hostess confirmed the 60 minute wait and I looked at my four kids, ages 11,9,7 and 5 and said, sorry - we aren't waiting. So, we squeezed out of the crammed entry of the restaurant and got back in our car, called around at a few other restaurants and picked the one that had the shortest wait time.  

As we were driving we saw a restaurant that we had never seen before, it was a Mexican Restaurant and looked like a dive - so naturally we thought it would be the best place to try out for the first time.  Dives are usually the best food.  So, Clint turned the car around and pulled up to the make shift house/restaurant.  We sat down and put in drink orders, followed closely by our food order.  5 of us got our drinks and it took another 30 minutes for the 6th drink to come out.  We watched as 4 groups of people came in, sat down ordered and got their food before us.  In the meantime, my 5 year old is being silly and crazy - not too much and not loud, just being so annoying and I am sitting next to him.  I am trying to make him laugh and get him to not complain that his food isn't here yet.  My 11 year old is taking in the environment and realizing the injustice of us not having food while everyone around us is eating, the 9 and 7 year old are doing their best to behave, but after an hour they are starting to do boy things - making faces and trying to spit out water from their straws. We did have 2 small bowls of tortilla chips - so yummy, but not enough - I felt like we were scavengers trying to beat out everyone else to the next chip. Did I mention this was a late dinner start for us to begin with?

So, I am watching my watch, the clock just keeps on ticking and after an hour of sitting there and trying to figure out which one of us will ask where our food is, we finally got a hold of a waiter.  I asked him what happened to our food?  Are they still cooking it?  He then tells me that his aunt left and didn't put the order in.  Say, what?  We sat there waiting for our food the whole time and the order was never put in.  The waiter then told us he could put the order in and put us before anyone else and my first thought is, no, sorry.  So, hungry and bummed out we left the restaurant.  Hey, we got free chips, salsa and drinks though. That's a plus, and they were really good chips. 

We started this adventure at 6:15 pm and now it is 7:30 pm and we still haven't had our Cinco De Mayo dinner, but there is no way I am trying a sit down restaurant again with our kids.  So, Taco Bell Drive through it is!  While we are driving to Taco Bell one of our children is crying about the devastating fact that they haven't eaten yet, how hungry they are and the drama was so overwhelming - it was funny.  I just started laughing and had to explain to this child that everyone was affected by what happened and that we were all hungry.  

Once we got to Taco Bell and got sandwiched into the drive through lane, my 5 year old started doing the potty dance.  We made sure the kids all went to the bathroom at home before we left, but then he drank a lot at the previous restaurant and now, it was coming.  Clint was telling him to hold it, but my mother instincts took over and realized the exploding child was literally about to explode.  While in the drive through lane, I got out of the car, pulled my son out and ran into the Taco Bell and took him to the bathroom.  Let's just say he really had to go and peed like a gallon of water that he just drank.  He was happy, we avoided disaster and we go back out to the drive through lane to find that Clint had moved a total of 5 feet.  We were still waiting in line at a fast food place. I couldn't help but notice the two women behind me laughing with me, they watched the whole episode. When it came down to it, it took us 25 minutes to get our fast food Cinco De Mayo tacos and burritos.  

We laughed all the way home, seriously - well, no - I laughed all the way home, while the kids complained and Clint thought I was going a little nutty.  Normally this would have irritated me, but everything went wrong and it was just so funny.  If we would have stayed at the first restaurant and stayed for the wait time, we most likely would have eaten before the time we left the second restaurant.  Also, if we would have let the second restaurant put in our food order again, then we would have eaten before the time it took us to eat our 2 dollar tacos and burritos at Taco Bell.  Needless to say, it was funny - dumb, but funny and I loved that I could laugh instead of get mad.  It made my night so much better. After almost 2 hours, we finally got to eat.

All this for a 2 dollar taco?  Oh, and by the way - my kids didn't like their burritos. Figures.