Breakfast with the Kids

Last year we had some friends living here in South Bend who made it a goal to go to the temple at least every other month.  I was impressed with their dedication and Melissa and I decided that during third year we would make the same goal.  Now I'm not going to say driving 2 1/2 hours to the Chicago is a great and wondrous sacrifice, especially when I have personally known some of those people that get talked about in conference.  You know the ones, they save for a year just to get enough money to take the 3 day bus ride and spend a day in the temple so they can be sealed then get back on a bus and are back home within a week.

For a kid who grew up 45 minutes from the temple and lived within walking distance of two temples for 4 more years of my life the 2 1/2 hours to Chicago is a big deal.  The biggest hurdle is what to do with the kids.  Seven hours is a long time to burden a friend with my kids.  You can always go on a Saturday and take turns doing a session while simultaneously taking turns entertaining the kids for two hours, but that often leads to arriving at the temple frazzled or quickly losing the wonderful spirit after leaving the temple.

We finally decided to bite the bullet and get a hotel for our temple trips.  There's a really nice Fairfield Inn (another time maybe I'll write about how much I love the Marriott chain of hotels or maybe I can just tell you that I really love the Marriott chain of hotels) less than half a mile from the temple that has a great breakfast.  So we leave after clinic on Friday and one of us catches the Friday night session while the other watches TV as the kids drift off to sleep then in the morning we split again and one of us catches the early session while the other sleeps in with the kids and gets breakfast.  This works because we cross a time zone going to Chicago so even if traffic is bad we still have 4 hours from the time I'm done with clinic until the last session at 8.

So with that picture painted I must tell you about breakfast.  It has come to my attention that I have two completely different sets of children based on their attitudes and this is never more apparent than at breakfast in a hotel without Melissa at my side.  The last time I took the kids to breakfast they screamed and yelled and ran around.  There was milk on the cereal on the floor and scalding hot chocolate on Kristian.  At times I'm proud of myself just to see that all 4 are still alive today.  Today was different.  All four kids were well behaved.  They all did exactly as I asked.  They waited patiently for me to get them some food and even Kamryn sat happily eating her yogurt.  The only spill we had was when I was mixing the hot chocolate and splashed a bit on my pants.  It was glorious and I can't wait to tell Melissa all about it when she gets back this morning.

Another funny thing that happens is the reactions we get from the other hotel patrons at breakfast.  When we were in Nauvoo Melissa took the kids to breakfast and was told that she had wonderfully behaved kids (nobody said that to me last time).  Today I had two older couples who complimented me on my beautiful family and one lady said the following to Spencer: "Isn't it nice that dad is taking you kids to breakfast while mom gets to sleep in?"

I'm imagining my siblings laughing out loud now after reading that last sentence.  I may have a few decent qualities, but we all know I'm certainly not that guy, at least not yet anyway.