Just Another Fancy Lunch

Imagine you are sitting in a posh restaurant trying to decide between the Organic Scotch Fillet and the Rabbit Risotto.

The floor-to-ceiling glass to your left gives you a breathtaking view of a beautiful lake. The sun is bouncing off the water and beside it couples are picnicking.

It’s so romantic that you go to kiss your partner because of the pure bliss of it all…and in troops three couples and seven children.

Only two of the kids actually walk in of their own accord, the rest are being carted by adults and one (mine) is wailing non-stop.

My other (not held by me thank God) is giving out a high-pitched scream that could possibly burst earlobes. They have put us at a table outside…alone.

I don’t meet my fellow diners eyes as I walk past trying to sshh my son who has just scraped his knee (third time in three days) and is bleeding profusely.

My husband sets down our friend’s eight year old daughter, who he has piggy-backed up two flights of stairs because of a slip and slide injury and asks, as we strap kids into high chairs, if we should just leave.

After we check out the kids menu prices ($28 per kid) we all debate it.

What’s harder and more embarrassing – staying here or picking everybody up again (still starving) and heading back through the dressed up, wine swilling, older-set inside?

Look, we had a grassed area, iphones, and colouring stuff for the kids…how bad could it be?

My husband takes offence to the fact we are paying money for this experience and goes and sits by himself, horrified that I want the marron (the most expensive dish on the menu). This lover’s tiff ends with me walking off to go and sit with the kids on the grass telling him to find me the cheapest thing on the menu then, plus a glass of the house wine.

The marron was delicious 🙂

The kids screamed, yelled, played and then the food came.

Finally they all calmed down a bit…or was it just that we were on our second glass of wine by that time?

We laughed at the hilarity of it all. Why did we think this was going to work? We’d all learned our lessons on numerous occasions but a couple of blissed out days on holiday here……

…had us thinking that our kids had turned into….well….adults.

We hadn’t seen them in days as they explored the grounds, made up games and chased the chickens.

There were parents scattered around the place reading books, taking naps and playing word games.

A sight I hadn’t seen in a while. Finally a holiday was a holiday.

Until lunch.

We live and we learn…again.

I think you just make the most of the situation. The food was unbelievable, the wine was incredible and we laughed so hard that it was actually worth all the hard-work and humiliation…

The humiliation part came with Julian’s loud announcement that he needed to poo and then the barefoot, strongly-led trip to the bathroom inside the restaurant….

Kids 🙂