Mother's Day in Spazland

Yesterday we celebrated Mother's Day with a flurry of activity. In the morning we met up with The Man's brother and his girlfriend to take The Man's mom out to brunch. After our delicious brunch at Brio, we strolled around the mall together and did some window shopping.

In the afternoon I dragged The Man and the kids to my favorite thrift store and scored a bunch of school shirts for the kids and then we were off to pick up some chocolates for my mom.

Before we knew it, it was time to meet my family at Outback to celebrate Mother's Day and my mom and dad's 46th Anniversary.

The Man and I pulled into the parking lot of Outback first and immediately I knew there may be some issues. The parking lot was FULL.  And it was only 4 o'clock. And we had a party of 11.

The Man asked if I had done the call-ahead seating.

oops

So I leaped out of the car and ran into Outback to put our name in, as if me running into the restaurant would somehow really make our wait shorter.  The hostess sort of smirked at me when she handed me our pager and said the wait would be about an hour and a half.

I really should have done that call-ahead seating thing....

But luckily, our Outback has a beautiful patio overlooking some water where we could sit and wait.  It's not really used for dining, but while we were waiting one of the servers came over and let us know that if we wanted to eat outside he could set us up right away.

So when the rest of our party arrived, it was decided that we'd give the outside thing a go. It was an overcast day with a slight breeze, a relatively cool day for South Florida in May, so we thought it would be comfortable.

And it wasn't too bad.

For a little while.

It was about the time that the waiter was taking our order that the clouds parted and the South Florida sun beamed down upon us like someone had turned on a tanning bed to "golden crisp" setting.  We grabbed umbrellas from our cars, we fanned ourselves with menus, I held my margarita glass to my neck.

And then The Man suggested we get our food to go.  And everyone rejoiced at the wonderful idea.

So we had our Mother's Day/Anniversary dinner in blissful air conditioned comfort at my mom and dad's house. Hoorah.