Sunday night we decided to go out to dinner as a family. Mrs. Charlotte gave us a gift card for several different restaurants for Valentine’s Day. We decided to save it until we’d have a chance to go to Maggiano’s. It’s Zach’s FAVORITE restaurant and it worked out great as they have one super close to our condo 🙂 I loved the outfits the kids wore to Don and Sara’s wedding but we never got a chance to get cute pics of them wearing them. So I packed them for our night out and got some cute pics before we left!
I love that she can stand up so well now for pics 🙂
Precious 🙂
My pretty girl!
When we decided to go to Orlando for our vaca I hunted for fun family things to do in the area that wouldn’t cost us much money. I know I may sound like a fool. I’m always talking about “spending smart” yet every time you read my blog we’re on yet another vacation haha. But when I make a list of my priorities for spending…after giving to God, paying bills, and saving for the future…having EXPERIENCES is at the top of my list. We don’t spend a lot on our trips. We are quantity over quality type people when it comes to travel. I just love being able to give my children all kinds of different experiences in life. I love making fun memories. I love it all! I think we are proof that you don’t have to spend a fortune to go and do 🙂 We still spend smart even while traveling often 🙂
One of the things I saw online was to go to The Peabody hotel in Orlando to see the ducks. I have actually stayed at The Peabody! Mom and I went there before my wedding to enjoy a relaxing trip just the two of us before I became a married woman 😉 They have a neat tradition with the ducks that wade in the fountain during the day. We timed it out to be at the hotel in time to see the ducks leave the fountain to head up to their own hotel suite for the evening (you can read the story of the famous ducks here). We hoped out of the car, ran in, watched the ducks, then left again. It was quick, easy, free and a fun little experience!
Standing on one foot
Of course we love us some ducks…no duck will ever be as famous to us as the Aflac one though 😉
Kye was standing on one foot to look like the duck 😉
He was itching to pet one!
You know our luck…of course I had talked up how neat the whole thing was to Zach and the kids and then the actual little show was quite the disappointment. I guess they were having an off day??? I promise I don’t remember it being like this when Mom and I saw them!!! Here’s a video I took of the ducks leaving the fountain!
Following our little duck stop we headed to Maggiano’s for dinner. It was wonderful! Our waiter was great and did an awesome job seating us plenty far away from pretty much everyone. I appreciated not having to apology for our loud baby 😉
She enjoyed the bread!
We are also working on not spending as much when we go out to eat. I’ve started packing Kye’s milk as so many restaurants charge extra for milk (like some places it’s almost $3. CRAZY!!!). Once Brittlynn is old enough to be ordering from the menu we plan to have the kids split things. Like an adult portion or share with ours or something as I can’t imagine forking out the cost for two adult meals plus two kids meals (and, Lord willing, eventually four kids meals). On this night though, Kye got to have himself a little feast. He wanted pizza and check out the kids meal pizza!!! How awesome was this?!?!
Diet or not, Zach couldn’t resist getting his favorite meal: Chicken Parmesan!
I went with a healthier option. And I LOVED it. I got a lemon chicken dish. It was loaded with spinach and was super yummy. I also traded out my side for asparagus and it was delicious. Like I saved it to eat at the end because I loved it so much! Zach isn’t an asparagus fan so it’s a treat for me to enjoy it when we eat out 🙂 We were so stuffed we weren’t even tempted to get their awesome chocolate cake for dessert!
Since we opted out of dessert we did grab a nice healthy handful of their amazing mints on our way out of the door haha. We wanted to get a pic outside the restaurant. This is so funny to me. The sign is in the top right corner…great job of being able to tell where we ate huh????
On the way back we had fun looking at all the sights on International Drive. There are so many fun kid friendly billboards and the HUGE putt-putt places and cheesy gift shops make for some great sight seeing. Kye also randomly taught himself to whistle??? I have no clue when or how he developed this skill but on the trip he kept walking around whistling. He started doing it in the car so I took a little video of it here.
We enjoyed our fancy night out and it all went super smoothly! Both kids enjoyed the restaurant (Britt happily shared all of our food and I brought her some yogurt that I fed her as well!) and behaved well. We had to take turns taking Britt out as she did get pretty fussy but that’s life with an infant right? 🙂
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We always give Caleb bread too at restaurants 🙂 It's nice that plain bread still makes them happy at this age. We rarely buy Autumn (2.5 yrs) her own kid meal as she wastes most of it. She always eats off of our plates. But I think when Caleb gets older, the kids splitting a kids meal is a good idea.