El Dorado in Garner: Don't go if you like eating or sitting.

My husband, son and I went out with my parents, sisters and their kids (my son's three cousins) for dinner last night.  Everyone had agreed on Mexican, and one of the closer places that we've visited a few times over the years is El Dorado in Garner.  We piled the six adults and four kids into three cars, and caravan-ed over.

My parents beat everyone there, so they went ahead and got a table.  The first sign that we might have problems was when we got to the table and they didn't have enough chairs for all of us.  The waiter asked how many more chairs we needed (hint:  enough for all the people still standing).  Then they didn't have enough high chairs, because I guess they've never had four whole kids in the restaurant at once.  Fine, we just switched the two older toddlers to booster seats.

Eventually, everyone had somewhere to sit, and we let the kids dig in to the chips and salsa.  Our waiter, who was tragically born without a personality, eventually came and took our drink orders.  Our drinks arrived, and we were ready to order.

Unfortunately, our waiter was apparently not ready to take our order.  As our drinks ran low and we ran out of chips and salsa, he continued to walk by us to the kitchen or other places, not glancing our way.  Look, I've waited tables and I know no one is thrilled about getting the table with all the kids, but he was treating us like we had leprosy.

Also, this was a Thursday night in a small part of town.  They were not busy.

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Toddlers anthropomorphize everything.

Editor's Note:  This post was written on Saturday, detailing events of that day.  It was originally scheduled to be posted yesterday, but unforeseen events delayed its posting until today.

Went with my hubby, son, and my dad (my son's "Papa") out to dinner tonight.  There's a place near our neighborhood that's like a slightly more family-friendly, large sports bar.  (If you've ever been to Playmakers, picture that, but with better lighting and high chairs.)

Now, my son, by virtue of being 23 months old, is sometimes difficult to take to restaurants.  This was made worse by a ridiculous wait time.  (I know restaurants are busy on Saturday nights.  I only call it ridiculous because of the larger parties that were sat before us...at a place that supposedly doesn't take call-ahead seating.)

But, all throughout the wait, my son was very sweet, and in a great mood.  Then we got to our table and got settled in.

And I do mean "settled in".  Our waitress was really, really bad.  On the rare occasions when we saw her, she was very friendly.  Too friendly.  As in, "Hey lady, if you stopped rambling about your nephew, you could have my kid's milk here by now."  We went for a long stretch without drinks, and by the time she finally came back, we just ordered everything, appetizers, entrees, next round of drinks, at once, to cut down on our wait time.

Then, my son saw the balloon.  The poor, sad, lone yellow balloon, floating up at the ceiling near our table.  He started crying and stretching his hands out towards it.  "Bloon!  Bloon!"

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