A Promise Kept!

Last year A-Dog (dear sweet cousin, are you happy he has a *code name* now?) had set some reading goals with rewards he came up with - we approved them without realizing what we were actually getting into! At his elementary school, you read books worth a set number of points (based on length, difficulty and content I assume) - they range from 1/2 point to probably about 30 points. Since the school did away with rewards, we had to come up with something. His goals were based on the previous year, so I figured we were safe. So I thought.



Not only did he meet his final goal, he exceeded it. Good for him! Sadly, we are still trying to catch up on the reward side of the achievement. One of his *high end* goals was dinner out with just mom and dad. No siblings. Just the 3 of us. To most that may seem a simple task. For us, not so much. Between regular season baseball and All Stars, available nights and babysitting money were both tapped out.


Until last night. Grandma and Grandpa came and took care of the 3 little ones while the 3 of us went to dinner. We had decided on the place long ago - and A-Dog had no clue where we were going. We landed at a popular local Teppan restaurant.




The kid was in AWE. Seriously. It was hard to talk to him (because of the noise level), but you could see by his expressions he was amazed and having a great time! If you've never been to a place like this you are missing out. They cook your food right in front of you and not just cook, they also entertain.



Notice the fire coming out of the *onion volcano*. He watched carefully and enjoyed every second of it. At one point during preparation, our chef flipped a piece of shrimp to A-Dog which was then caught in his wide open mouth!


He even used his chopsticks for his teriyaki chicken :-)! Thankfully he opted for a fork to eat the rice, or we could still be there today!