Mommy-Daughter Date Night

Saturday night, Beth and Cliff had an elder's dinner/meeting so I decided the best way to keep Leyla from driving us all crazy, getting in the middle of things and making a mess, was to have a date night! I really wanted to go to Chili's and get a chocolate cake so I found one close by we could go to. Then I looked up restaurants in the area just to see and found out there was a Chuck-e-Cheese's! I really wasn't in the mood for pizza and figured it wouldn't be the best quality but I thought it would be something really fun for Leyla. So I decided to go to Chili's first for dinner and then to Chuck-e-Cheese's to play.

Dinner was great and Leyla helped me eat the chocolate cake - she wouldn't let me take a picture of her eating it though. So here she is drinking her milk.

She was pretty good during dinner and the food came amazingly fast so that helped!

Now here's where the "fun" started. I had looked up the Chuck-e-Cheese but I didn't really pay attention to the address. I knew it was on N Central Expressway around McDermott. **Note to self: READ the step by step directions!** The Chili's was on McDermott, by hwy 75. So I got back onto McDermott and drove until I hit what looked like an expressway and looked around for a Chuck-e-Cheese! The problem is, it was already dark, and drizzling. I really couldn't see and not being familiar with the area, couldn't drive and look at the same time! I had driven and driven and didn't see one anywhere. So I finally decided to call my mom and she looked it up on her computer. I knew I was at McDermott and (what I thought was) the expressway, so I just needed her to point me in the right direction. 

Well. Her map says it's only 6 miles from Beth's house. I didn't know for sure but I KNEW I had driven way more than 6 miles. I was so confused. I realized the "expressway" was some other highway - but I couldn't see to read the signs so I had missed that. And, in this part of the country, all the roads are split by the highways and run one way next to them and you have to do a million u-turns to get in the right direction. So, I had pulled over by this point, and then got back on the road and did a u-turn to go back the direction I had came.

And suddenly I am in the middle of nowhere. Taking a u-turn should put you going the opposite direction, right?!? Not so apparently! I had no idea where I was and I was NOT going back the direction I had come. I was so tired and upset at this point because it was getting late, I was wasting all my gas, Leyla had been so good and was patiently waiting to play, and then fell asleep. And I just wanted her to get to have fun and believe me that I really was trying to find this place for her to play!

So after being really frustrated - Mom AND me - we finally figured out roughly where I was and which direction I was going and I was able to get back to some roads I knew. Then Mom tells me that it looks like the N. Central Expressway runs parallel and right next to Hwy 75. This is where the story gets good. The "expressway" is the stupid FRONTAGE RD FOR 75! So guess what. The Chuck-E-Cheese was on the frontage road literally a quarter of a mile around the corner from the Chili's I had eaten dinner at an hour before, on McDermott. And it took me an hour to get there...

I woke poor Leyla up and decided she was GOING to play, ha, if I had to drag her in there. No really, I knew she would wake up as soon as she saw all the games and toys and kids (she did). I figured, we didn't really waste her playing time, because she could only play for as long as I had money. So the only thing wasted was gas and it was already past her bedtime. But she still had fun.

 The games for toddlers didn't involve many tickets and were really only rides like this one. I took her over to the basketball and bowling games and she had fun but couldn't throw the ball hard enough to score. So I turned it into a watch-mommy-and-pull-out-the-tickets game. Every time I scored a ticket would pop out and she would exclaim, "Mommy, look, ANOTHER ONE!!" :)

 It cost $10 for 40 tokens and we ended up with 150 tickets that she turned in for prizes - she chose a ring, a toy rubix cube, and a blue crazy straw. Those were her picks. I'm glad she had fun even though it took us an hour to find it. She even told me, "Mommy, you found it!" What an adventure....

Here she is playing on the playground today at the park, after church. It was really nice out and we were both able to get some exercise, walking around the pond, chasing the ducks, and swinging :)

Oh, and baby still doesn't seem to want to make an appearance. Stubborn boy.