A Fun Date Night Saturday

Last Saturday Kent and I had a fun and out-of-the-ordinary date. We met my parents at a new restaurant on the recommendation of my dad who has eaten lunch there a few times. We loved this place!


It's called The Center Street Bistro, and is on the first two floors of The Madison. The address is 295 W Center in Provo. It's in the building that used to be Provo Craft (I believe).



We sat on the mezzanine floor in the front corner by the windows, where we could watch everything below us on Center Street. But we were way more interested in the building we were in. The ambience is old and hip at the same time. We actually gave ourselves a tour while we waited for our food. There are tables tucked into nooks throughout the first two floors, as well as sofas, lounging chairs, and many other interesting furniture pieces. (I liked the table made from an antique door, located by the men's restroom.)

The food was really good too! Kent had an amazing mocha burger, which tasted like chocolate, not coffee. I had a chicken salad with sweet basalmic dressing. Our meals together cost $18. Awesome! Instead of peanuts or chips, the complimentary appetizer was a delicious hummus and fried flat bread.

I'm talking this place up mostly because I want it to stay in business. They opened in October, and though they had a few kinks with the food, those seem to be worked out now. But the place was empty! That made it nice a quiet for our dinner conversation--and we plan to visit it tomorrow for Valentine's Day because there will likely be no wait--but customers seriously need to be filling it up. You can check out this review from the Daily Herald if you have doubts. (It's a fair review; just be sure to read about the author's second visit.) I would guess that the neon signs, which are hanging in every window, advertising beer are sending the wrong signals to non-drinkers who would love this place as much as we did. If it were my business, I would hang the neon signs in the windows of the third-floor Cowboy Bar, and leave the lower windows empty so people can look through them and see what a great place it is.


After dinner, we headed to the kids' school, Freedom Preparatory Academy for a Trivia Night fundraiser. I had carefully put together a team of brilliant people...and we mostly relied on my dad to carry us. That's not to say that we didn't all contribute (I was the only one to supply answers during the round about Freedom Academy), but we won the grand prize by six questions, which were the difficult ones about the Marx Brothers and recognizing photos of dead people that only my dad knew. The rest of the team included my mom, my brother and my sis-in-law (his wife) and her parents. The other three parents did win us lots of questions by buying 20 mulligans, which gave us free answers. And Jenni's dad supplied the Smart Water. Kent had loaded up on caffeine on dinner, but I think the Smart Water did the trick.


(Did I mention that Jennifer Aniston was on our team? Oh, that's because she wasn't.)

That's right, I said our table won the grand prize! In addition, we won two other rounds outright, and a third by default. (Ironically, as a team we felt least prepared to answer questions about sports, but that was the first round we won.) We raked in coupons for free ice cream cones (244 such coupons!), $50 per person off new tires (bad timing--Kent and I replaced the tires on both our vehicles last month), gift certificates to a local restaurant, free dessert being served that night, and tickets to some Jazz games! Woo hoo! Additionally, the four couples at our table won six of the silent auctions. I can't wait until next year when we can defend our win!

Aha!

Every weekend, #2's BFF, Sadilla Milla (our nickname for her), spends the night. We love having her around as she is very easy going and also willing to pitch in with chores. She blends in with my kids so well that I often mistake her for #1.

Anyway, #2 and her BFF always want to sleep in the playroom. We have a real bed and a makeshift bed in there, so there's room for both of them. We don't, however, have heat in there, which I would think would be a problem, but apparently being frigid doesn't bother them. Or maybe it does, and they are keeping mum because they just aren't willing to compromise their little secret!

Today I made a discovery. In one of my regular searches for something I had misplaced, I resorted to looking through the nooks and crannies of the playroom. After Edwin left last fall, we kept his dresser in there, thinking it would be a good place to store toys. Well look what else it stores:


Now, in years past we've had mice in the house, which led to a very strict rule about which rooms were allowed to contain food. Hint: it's none of them! (Other than the kitchen and dining rooms.) So my kids have to be secretive about sneaking food to other rooms. I'm impressed that they are willing suffer in the cold to be able to nibble through the nights. On the other hand, I'm perplexed that they would continue this sneaky snacking on stale food. When I saw the chips--a favorite to dip in cottage cheese--I popped one in my mouth. Blech! The subdued flavor of clothes mixed with old dresser wood had mingled with the open bag of stale chips in a not-gourmet manner. Double blech!

While I was at it, I also found #1's swimsuit, which she had been missing since Christmas, and which, in recent days was the subject of an accusation that may have been thrown at me and/or my laundry sorting abilities. It's a good thing I can let teenage accusations roll off my back. Next time such a complaint flies my way, I'll whip out this piece of photographic evidence:



*For the record, I'm glad #2 thought to hide "stolen" food in drawers rather than her clothing. I have two separate friends who have discovered their children using a more unusual place to stash the evidence. Apparently, when a four-year old is sneaking a cookie--or even ice cream!--the first hiding place that comes to mind is the front of her pants!

Follow-Up to Birthday House

(How have two weeks flown by since my last post?! So much for my New Year's resolution.)

I thought I'd post a follow-up before moving on with more recent happenings. My last post Part 1 WAS Part Only. I made myself a Chinese New Year's dinner, and #4 made me a Chinese birthday hat and dragon mask. (Go year of the dragon!) The kids made a little bit of an effort to clean the house a little bit...and Kent rescued me from the mess by taking me out for a birthday treat. We tried a new place in Orem called Rollup Crepes. The atmosphere was fun, the crepes were good, but the Nutella hot chocolate was the best! Kent and I kept wondering as we sipped it down how we had never thought to add Nutella to that favorite cold-weather drink. I now have Nutella hiding in my cupboard for just that purpose. Mmmm...

We have since cleaned the house rather thoroughly--hosting two parties in one weekend will do that--and I have high hopes that we can maintain. So far we're at five days and counting!

Birthday House: Part One--Part Only?

I normally give myself a clean house for my birthday. Today, the starting point was so discouraging that I decided to just avoid this house altogether. I dropped the kids off for breakfast at school (no room for food prep in the kitchen), and used a BOGO coupon to get Gandolfo's breakfast sandwiches for me and #5. (The Radio City with Swiss instead of American cheese. Yum!) Then I renewed my driver's license, made this video (be glad you can't smell it--I think our dishwasher may be leaking, but I don't want to know about that until tomorrow), and then I enjoyed an afternoon at my friend Kelly's house. She put on a birthday lunch for me. So far it's been a lovely day not being home.

Yesterday #5 was very excited about the big birthday surprise the kids have in store for me. About seven seconds after telling me he was so excited for my surprise, he spilled the beans and told me I'm supposed to run errands or nap on my birthday so the kids can get the house sparkling clean. It's now 4:10 p.m. and I'm going to run errands. And #5 didn't even ruin the surprise, because I'll still be VERY surprised if this place is clean before their bedtime. Take a look:

The "Pleage of Alegenst"

#4 (second grade) might not be the best speller yet, but at least she is patriotic.

I found this old gift bag hanging from a mini American flag on the shelf in her room. Now that she has written the words, the pledge is a cinch. I've even caught her and #5 facing this bag and reverently reciting the pledge with their hands on their hearts and their attention on the Stars and Stripes.



A couple months ago, in the same patriotic spirit, #5 (Kindergarten) broke out singing the National Anthem while he accompanied me for an errand in the Assistant Director's office at his school. There was a poster displaying a photo of the flag, and #5 just couldn't help himself. When he finished singing, I gave him a hug, and the A.D. commented on how much he loves that song.

A No-School Holiday

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day everyone.


Here's a look at how my kids spent their free day.

#4 hung out with her siblings and colored and made cookies.

#2 went surfing.


#1 made baby shower invitation with her friends. They are throwing a shower for their Church leader who recently adopted a newborn.


#s 3 and 5 played with friends...who like to use people as canvases. (#5 was happy to be the Spider King all day.)


I spent two hours making the kitchen cleaner. (Not clean; just -er.) After two hours, I was happy to switch tasks and catch up on my work for ACHF (the foundation). Is it lame that my holidays are just days to do different work besides driving kids around all day? I did my work to an interview on the radio about the history of civil rights activism, which was interesting...and maybe the kids subconsciously learned a few things. Overall, it was nice to have a free day commemorating the mostly peaceful battle that made our country more free for all its citizens.

Laser Tag

A few months ago we coughed up the money for the Utah Pass of Passes for each member of our family. Because I hate wasting money, we've put these passes to good use. One included attraction is the Trafalga Fun Center in Lehi, which has a pretty good laser tag course. Laser tag became popular when I was a college student, but I blew it off as a childish activity. I'm glad I gave it a second chance, because it's actually quite fun to get together with a bunch of adult friends and run around in the dark shooting each other with beams of light.

My kids are also picking up on the fun of this game.

When #5 was in charge of our Family Home Evening activity recently, he asked if we could go play laser tag. Lehi is too far to drive for FHE. Undaunted, he and #4 disappeared into their room for the rest of the afternoon to put together a homemade laser tag activity.

When the time came, they brought out our vests and suited us up.


























#5 showed us all how to make our laser "hand guns". He was very patient with those of us who couldn't get our gun's barrel facing the correct way!

Then they split us into teams and showed us our recharging stations. My team recharged by standing by a kitchen chair and waiting for #4 (the referee) to beep, which let us know our gun was live again.



We turned out most of the lights and ran around shooting each other. If we got shot five times, we had to recharge. #4 monitored the whole game. She gave us a countdown when time was running out, and then gathered all of us to announce the scores. The all-girls team had SIX points! But the co-ed team had EIGHT! I made at least 20 hits, so I think the scoring was a little off. But we had a great time of it! Thanks for thinking of a great activity #5.