The things we do for love...

This morning, after laying in bed for over an hour discussing how we failed to get our asses out of bed to either go hiking or even to church or, well, anything, and after spending another thirty or so minutes trying to decide what we should do today (She suggested the zoo, but I reminded her that it's hot here...We were looking for "adventure". Yeah, that's my word. She said, "exciting". Whatever.), she checked her phone only to see she had two missed calls from her sister's house. As soon as we saw this, she remembered that her six-year-old nephew had wanted to spend the night on Saturday night...Yup, we totally forgot. Phoenix then said, "Maybe we should do something with him...Like take him to lunch or something." I agreed. She called and made a huge mistake. Here's the conversation:


Phoenix- "Do you want to go do something with me and Heather today?"
Nephew- "Yes."
Phoenix- "What do you want to do?" (I wouldn't have asked this...He could've said ANYTHING!)
Nephew- "We could go to lunch." (Whew! Close call.)
Phoenix- "Where do you want to go?" (NEVER ASK A KID THIS!)
Nephew- "Peter Piper Pizza!!!"


What the hell!? Peter Piper Pizza on a Sunday afternoon!? NO FREAKIN' WAY! Oh yeah...We did it. And we brought along his four-year-old brother and thirteen-year-old brother too, you know, just for shits and giggles.


Forty-five minutes later, we picked the boys up and headed to Peter Piper to go eat his nasty pizza. You know, they don't have to have good food when their attraction to children is not the fabulous food, but the over-priced arcade games. We walked in the door and were immediately greeted by three billion screaming, laughing, crying, yelling children, a bunch of miserable adults, a 72-year-old man celebrating his birthday, and more birthday balloons than could be found at Balloons-R-Us (If that store even exists...It should though...). After scanning the restaurant and finding one of like two empty tables, we parked the kids and then went to order the over-priced crappy food. As we went to order, Phoenix pointed out a family who was taking a picture together in front of the ball pit. Who takes a family picture in front of the ball pit!? I wonder if that will be their Christmas card picture this year...


We survived the crappy, too-much sauce, greasy pizza and the highway-robbery arcade games. I am a little pissed though that as I was playing a racing game that reset itself and ended my game...I mean, I put the two tokens in there and expected to be able to play my game, you know? But I digress...(stupid game!) So, in the end, we had over five hundred tickets for the two youngest boys to split. Peter Piper was out of most of the prizes they offered. It's nice when you're all, "We want a Jeep, a whoopee cushion, and over-sized glasses" only to hear the dumb blonde girl say, "Oh. We're out. Of all of that." *rolls eyes* We left with vampire teeth, various small pieces of candy, two giant pixie sticks, Chinese handcuffs, two heart slinkies, and this annoying "gun" that shot out a clamp which you could pick stuff up with. I say "annoying" because as I circled the parking lot at Sam's Club while waiting for Phoenix to run in and grab some Willy Wonka candy that they were out of, her nephew (the oldest one) proceeded to attempt to grab my glasses off my face. This makes driving interesting, let me tell you...Plus, there's nothing quite like being in the car with a whiny four-year old, a six year old telling me which song I should choose on the iPod, and fending off the clamp-gun from the thirteen year old...Good times. As we drove back to drop the boys off, I told Phoenix, "The things I do for love..." She laughed at me...I'm serious though.


I also decided today, as we were wandering through the over-crowded place that we will have well-behaved, clean children who will not throw food on the floor, spill soda all over restaurants, and who will refrain from running into people or trying to take tickets from other people's games. And I'm also hoping that our kids won't like crappy pizza. Perhaps they'll even share their tickets with me and let me get my own pair of vampire teeth...Ehh, a girl can dream, can't she?