Delicious

Zion asked to have Vietnamese food for dinner tonight, so we drove out to Spring Valley to our favorite local Vietnamese place (called "The Vietnam Restaurant". Not exactly confidence inspiring, but it was all we could find when we moved up here, and it turs out it's pretty good!). We've been going there for 5 years, and the waitress even remembers that we don't want peanuts on anything, even when we're sucky parents and forget to say so when we order.

Tonight we ordered pho, 4 spring rolls, noodle salad with chicken, noodle salad with lemongrass grilled beef, and crispy chicken with sticky rice. And then we devoured it all. The children were particularly ravening. Picture a couple of small formica tables pushed together. They're loaded with food, and the kids at the table have plates in front of them piled high, and are reaching across to the furthest parts of the table to shove their spoons into pho, dip sticky rice into sauce, and crunch more chicken skin. We're a bit worried about how much food we'll go through when they're teenagers. They ate like we'd been starving them, and not at all like they'd had huge bowls of full fat yogurt with maple syrup and hour prior.

Liel gobbled up her lemongrass grilled beef and immediately asked me for more "brown chicken". "That's beef, sweetie", I said. "Finish the chicken you have on your plate, and then you can have more of the brown chicken. Er, beef". No wonder the poor kid can't tell which type of animal she's eating. Her own mother can't keep it straight from one sentence to the next!

When we left I put one of Robert's playlists on the iPod, and then accidentally bumped it, causing it skip ahead about 6 songs. As I flipped back trying to get to the right spot Robert wailed, "What are you doing?? You're skipping great songs!...What playlist is this anyway?" Mighty impressed with his own clever, he was. For once hitting red lights on the 30 minute drive home didn't seem to bother him at all.