Vintage Monday: It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Pees on the Patio

Since I started writing A Midwestern Girl in Cowboy Country (now Chasing Roots, of course) almost five years ago, whenever I knew my travel plans, work responsibilities, or family commitments would keep me from posting according to my self-imposed schedule, I made arrangements for the blog to carry on without hiccup. I wrote content, took pictures, and assembled posts days - sometimes even weeks - ahead of time and set them up to go live just as they would if I had clicked the "publish" button at 5:00 a.m. 

But not this week. 

This week is spring break, which means my kids will be home and we'll be trying to cram in plenty of both fun and relaxation. In years past I've worked throughout the week prior to cover my spring break posts, but this time around I couldn't get it together. We had company last weekend, and then I was just too busy, physically frustrated, mentally exhausted, and emotionally drained to write ahead.  

So that I can catch up on life, I have decided to take these five days "off" from blogging. (The word off belongs in quotation marks because while I won't produce new content this week, I still need to work on next week's posts and a couple of pieces for the Red Cross. So I'll be "off", not off.) I plan to post every day, but rather than new adventures, you'll find five of my favorite "vintage" stories.   

I don't like going this route, but as Tom would say, it is what it is. Please forgive me, come back next week, and enjoy these throwback posts!


It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Pees on the Patio
(This post has been edited slightly for space. Read the post in its entirety here.)

Two weekends ago our family went out for dinner with friends at a local restaurant that hosts an outdoor back patio and...wait for it...a fenced-in playground. Now you might be thinking, "a playground for kids at a restaurant? What's so new and/or exciting about that? I take my kids to eat and play at Chick-Fil-A all the time!"

This restaurant isn't like Chick-Fil-A or McDonalds. This is a "regular" restaurant, where you don't order over the counter and adult beverages are on the menu. But unlike at a regular restaurant, you don't need an endless supply of coloring books and crayons, tic-tac-toe with sugar packets, or Angry Birds on your smart phone to survive dinner with your kids. You can sit on the patio, order and enjoy your drinks, order and enjoy your food, and then just relax, all while your kids burn off copious amounts of energy in the sandbox and on the jungle gym.  I only just learned of this restaurant, but you can bet I'll dine there frequently in the years to come.

Seriously, why are there not more of these restaurants?! If I had money to burn I'd already be halfway to building a coffee shop with a playground, a wine bar with a playground, a sports bar with a playground, an Italian restaurant with a playground, and a 50's-themed diner with a playground.

I've gotten off topic...

I happened to be positioned with my back to the playground, which suited me just fine because I knew the friends sitting across from me would let me know if Will used his karate skills without supervision or Hallie made another little kid cry. As dinner came to a close, Stacey stopped me mid-conversation and said, "don't turn around". If you're anything like me, when someone tells you not to turn around, you usually turn around. As I began to shift in my seat, Stacey repeated herself, "no, really. Don't turn around". But I did anyway. And I saw Hallie, standing right behind Tom on the patio, holding her dress up above her head and peeing.

I realize that four-year-olds have accidents, but COME ON.

I assume she was having so much fun playing that she didn't realize she had to go, and that when she finally did realize she had to go and came to tell us, it was too late. It wasn't too late, however, for her to protect her dress by pulling it up over her head and exposing her little butt to all those on the patio.

I assumed that because Tom was closest to Hallie he would address this situation. Ha. Tom spent 10 flustered seconds standing behind Hallie, waving his arms around her like a loony octopus. Stacey must not have been able to stand the level of ridiculousness we were about to reach, because at that point she looked at her husband, Aaron, and loudly exclaimed, "don't just sit there - get up and help him!" So then both men spent another 10 flustered seconds standing in Hallie's general vicinity, Tom wildly waving his arms (considering maneuvers that might successfully separate Hallie from her wet underwear, perhaps?) and Aaron clutching a napkin in his hands as if to shield her from a rogue enchilada. Watching those two try to figure out how to deal with Hallie was so funny that I almost peed my own pants.

Eventually I intervened, and five minutes later Hallie was clean and dry.

And don't worry about patio - Tom "took care of it" with sand. Kind of reminded me of this scene in Big Daddy.

I guess we're still not quite done with potty training…

P.S. Happy birthday, Mom!