Howard was off at Dragon’s Keep for a game night. Kiki had been dropped at her friend’s house for an all night gigglefest slumber party. I decided that the remaining three kids and I deserved some sort of a treat too. The best treat I could think of for me was not having to think about cooking dinner. Unfortunately buying fast food or pizza tends to run over $30. We’re trying to watch our spending. The other alternative was frozen pizza, but I really wanted something more exciting to offer the kids. This is when I remembered Crazy Dinner.
When my parents came to watch the kids while I was at Ad Astra, they took the kids to the grocery store, gave each of them $5, and told them to pick what they wanted for dinner. The kids loved it. They made their selections and then all the food was brought home and shared. I decided to give this a try. We could have a treat dinner for $15. Link, Gleek, and Patch were thrilled with the idea. They’ve been trying to talk me into doing this ever since Grandma left. We hit our first snag when I did not have five dollar bills to hand them. They really liked holding the money in their hands and making their own purchases. Next time I’ll make sure I have the cash. This time the kids just had to suffer with letting mom do the paying.
I fully expected to be in the store for 30 minutes or more while the kids dithered over what to buy. But Link already knew exactly what he wanted. He headed straight for the frozen pizzas, where he selected exactly the same kind of pizza that we had in our freezer back home. Patch also picked out a frozen pizza. Gleek was far more interested in sweet things. She selected Capri Sun drinks and some yogurts. I grabbed some jalapeño cream cheese poppers for my treat. Within 10 minutes we were in the check out line and headed home. …and so we’re having frozen pizza for dinner, but it is extra special because the kids picked it out all by themselves.