Happy Thoughts

We have a favorite family restaurant. It's called Grande's, and they specialize in pizza... although they do serve other delightful Italian meals. Anyway, when we ask Ben where he would like to go out to eat, he almost invariably shouts, "GRANDE'S!" Which of course we expected. Anyway, it's a great place, because we always order the same size and variety of pizza (so it's quick), and Josh and I usually get the salad bar... which means the boys get bread and croutons and raw peas to munch on. Right, as if they eat the raw peas. But I still try! When the pizza comes, it's insanity for a few minutes while Josh cuts up one of the boy's slices into pieces, and I cut up the other. And then there's the horrible "Wait till it cools!" time period... tell that to an 18 month old! He will chirp "Hot, hot, hot!" over and over again, but he still jams it into his mouth like it's fresh from the fridge. Once the first slices are gobbled down, the next ones go faster because it's cooled a bit.

I was saying to Josh the other day, I don't even really like the salad, I feel like it's expensive, and all I really want is pizza anyway. But then I got to thinking about how no one else in my family really eats vegetables and if I want any kind of variety, I have to seize the opportunity and eat them while we're out... so I ate two bowls of salad this last time.

Ben polished off two slices of (gigantic, NY style) pizza, and Matt had just finished his first. Ben started to CRY because I went to serve Matt his second piece, because HE wanted to eat it. I ended up cutting it in half. What I'm saying is, Josh and I ate half a pizza, and BEN AND MATT ATE HALF A PIZZA. Seriously?

All at once I realized, there is a day coming very soon when the Kresge family will have to order more than one pizza. I don't know, not profound, but it struck me just the same. And it made me smile. And then I realized

I'm going to have to make a lot more trips to the salad bar if I don't want to go hungry.