We have a few back to school traditions, like forcing encouraging my kids to take photos with Blaine every year on the first day, and forcing encouraging them to answer the surveys I give them each year.  One of my favorite traditions, though, is our annual Night-Before-The-First-Day-of-School-Dinner at a local Japanese steakhouse.

When we lived in Georgia, the year after Kendrie was diagnosed with cancer, someone sent me an anonymous gift card to the local place there for Mother’s Day.  To this day, I still have no idea who did it.  But we went, and liked it so much, we decided to go again the night before school started that year.   And then, to keep the restaurant “special”, we decided that would be the one and only night each year we would eat there …. we haven’t missed a year yet, and went tonight as well.

This evening’s quality family time didn’t start off so well, as there were two big birthday parties there ahead of us and since we didn’t have reservations (seriously, this is the first time in seven years we haven’t been immediately ushered to a table ….) we had to wait almost 35 minutes to be seated.  By the end, Kellen was practically prostrate on the floor, bored out of his mind and STARVINGTODEATHGEEZCAN’TWEJUSTGOTOMCDONALDS??????? 

Then I got annoyed with him because for goodness’ sake, you’re almost 12 and a HALF years old, I think you should have the self-control to sit here quietly, without complaining, for half an hour.  Then Brayden oh-so-helpfully made a comment to him, which made him mad, and pretty soon we were having one of those “hissing under my breath about how we are eating here for dinner and you will LIKE IT IF IT KILLS YOU because its our TRADITION for goodness’ sake!!!!” moments.

Soooooooooooo, who else is more than ready for the kids to start school tomorrow?????

Anyway, by the time the first flames whooshed up in the air, everyone was happy again and the evening was salvaged.  At least until 10 pm, when I remembered that I had forgotten to buy Kellen a lock for his football locker and I had to go to Wal Mart for a last minute school supply run at that late hour.    That certainly wasn’t the highlight of my evening …. but this was pretty good:

You know what tradition I’m NOT going to continue?  Trying to capture non-flash photos in dark restaurants ….. my gosh, these pictures reek.