Puttin' on the Ritz

After a long three weeks of creating book layouts, flipping books and proofing the final copy, Bryan decided it was high time to get the four of us out of the confines of our home and do something fun.  We drove around for a while with no purpose and ended up on the road squashed in between highway 14 and the river.  The homes along the riverfront vary greatly.  We passed multi-million dollar mansions then next door would be Sasquatch's shack.  We came across El Swampo and a yard filled with chickens and a turkey.  There were several opportunities for amazing views of Mount Hood...if it wasn't cloudy, which is hard to come by here, especially in the spring.  At the end of the road we found ourselves just outside Camas and remembered the pizza restaurant, Twilight Pizza Bistro, we had eaten at when we first moved to Washington and decided to hit them up for dinner. We were a little nervous, as the last time it was just the two of us, but now we'd doubled in size and would need two high chairs, as well as the patience and understanding of the restaurant patrons.  Somehow, we lucked out.  There was a table in the back corner out of the way of anybody dining in the restaurant.  After our waitress took our order, we started looking around and realized almost every table had a child or two.  Phew!  If the twins decided to meltdown, no one was going to be overly annoyed about it.  Maybe we'd even get a few sympathetic smiles.
The twins were in seventh discovery heaven.  Their little heads turned back and forth, back and forth, as fast as their necks would allow.  They couldn't get the surroundings absorbed fast enough.  I tried to get a few pictures, and you can see the excitement hardly contained within their little bodies.  Dinner went really well; the food was as good as we remembered and the twins behaved great the entire time.  Well, until the very end.  Just as we finished paying, and Bryan stood up to get our things, Laith dropped his plastic spoon and started to have a spastic fit about losing his beloved toy.  Thank goodness it didn't last long since the change in venue (mommy hoisting him out of the high chair to get ready to go) made his spoon tantrum subside as he needed his undivided attention again.  This isn't the first time we've made the trek to eat out as a family at an establishment nicer than fast food.  So far we've been lucky the handful of times we've chosen to brave a formal restaurant.  I'm choosing to believe this means we have well mannered children.