Princess Dinner, Take II

Laura, Ibi, Margareta and up front, Daniela

I don't even remember if I wrote about last month's princess dinner. Let's make it short and sweet: it was high stress with low obedience and manners. The idea of a Princess Dinner is to celebrate the girls being girls and have special time with a guy who thinks they are special, as well as work on manners in public and all other sorts of social education. Every girl should be her daddy's princess, it's just how God made us. Since my girls are lacking a daddy, I asked Jannes if he could be interested in doing this with me. This was to be a once a month event...one month later, it was time to try again.

Jannes and I had gone "fish tank shopping" earlier in the day and I had wondered if we could bring the girls back in the evening. We decided to give it a go. Tonight was to be a jeans night princess dinner and once we were dropped off near the pet store, one girl on my shoulders, one on his, and one girl with each adult's hand, we were off! The girls did very well in the pet store! There were fish, birds, rabbits (so cute!), a sleeping dog and mice and I must say, the mice stole the show. There was one guy who would climb on top of his wheel, sit there and stare back at you. The girls did a good job of using inside voices (the goal of the month) and soon they were ready to go. We walked to China Blue for dinner and at the crosswalks, we would count down the numbers until we could walk...amusement for some of the crowd.

One unplanned stop was into a church having mass. The girls wanted to go in and didn't want to leave. They watched people entering and crossing themselves and bowing, say lots of pictures of Jesus, wondered when the "pastor" would come in, noticed the beautifully painted ceiling. I have hang-ups about how other Christian religions worship...but this was so neat. They were seeing how others worship God.

God gave us a GREAT waitress at China Blue...patient, sweet, kind, economical! I asked for four plates of rice and she said three would do it. We ordered two meals and I was asking what else to order and she said that would be enough and if not, she would bring us more. Jannes asked the girls what drink they wanted and they said suc, which means both soda and juice. He ran with that in the direction of "apple, orange, pear?" and they each chose until one asked for Fanta (carbonated, which I let them have -- it is not caffientated -- but it does cause burps, which these little ladies are not good at containing) and out sweet waitress replied that they were out. I'm not for lying to kids, but that one was ok with me. The girls waited well for the food, had a lesson in how to use chopsticks, did a better job of not finishing their drinks in 30 seconds flat, used silverware, stayed seated in their chair, used appropriate volume levels to converse (this is all HUGE!) and then it was time for something new. I must confess, Chinese food was not a big hit, although Margareta really liked the rice with egg and all the girls liked the peanuts that came in the chicken with peanuts plate.

While we waited for the bill, the girls got a bit bored/tired/feisty, but overall they were wonderful. It was also asked if we could return to the pet store or the church. We had to pass by the nicest hotel in town on our way to China Blue and the girls said they wanted to go there. We replied that it was for presidents, ambassadors, kings...but after tonight's behavior, we might be headed there ourselves.

We walked to a taxi stand and ran into a friend of Angela's along the way. She didn't notice me at first, because she later said she was thinking, "what a nice family"...two kids on shoulders and two holding hands of "parents"...it's nice to think we are making progress.