Kortne's Restaurant

Kortne loves to spend time in her room lately. I realize that as kids get older they spend more time in their room. Her room is very comfortable for her and she loves to do little crafts and activities in there. It makes me feel good that she is comfortable and happy playing in her room. In weeks past she has setup forts using the PVC pipe kit that I put together for the kids and blankets. I cant tell you how many times she put up different things in there that I had to put the clips on the blankets. This weekend she had a special project going on in there that she wanted to be a surprise. She worked hard on it for a couple hours. She grabbed a bunch of plates, bowls and silverware and dragged them into her room so I kind of had a clue as to what she was doing. She moved her bed around and setup a restaurant, emptied her bookshelf into the corner to put her restaurant stuff up and cleared out the closet to make it the kitchen. She thought out every detail from table, chairs, napkins, glasses, silverware, plates and menus. She hand wrote out two sets of menus for Austin and I and had at least 10 items on each for the appetizer, main course, drinks, and deserts. So when she was ready she asked us to be her customers. Austin and I knocked on the door and told her we had a dinner reservations. She smiled and showed us to our table. Austin was great and played along well. He put lots of thought into each menu choice which was kind of funny since it was pretend.

So we placed our drink order and she disappeared into the closet, er a kitchen. I heard dishes clanking and water squirting and I suffocated my normal "don't make a mess" instinct and let her just do her thing. She used a sports bottle full of water to fill up our glasses. I ordered diet Pepsi and Austin ordered lemonade, however the lemonade machine was broke so he had to pick a different drink. Its funny how she thinks of all these different scenarios and pulls them out for her pretend kitchen. So she brought out our drinks and took the drink menu and delivered the appetizer menu. We ordered each course and she delivered it full of beads representing food. When we were done she cleared our plates and took them back to the kitchen and prepared it for Austins turn.

Its fun to watch my kids grow up and use their imaginations. Another both kids did is made mailboxes that are taped to our doors. They are boxes made from paper and we can transfer notes back and forth in them. Austin even made one for my door and stuck it up. Its so darn big that I keep crushing it when I go in my room though.

This was the last full week of the summer the kids spent with me and its back to the school schedule. We had lots of fun this summer and were very active with our family. I'm glad that they get to experience many different things and hopefully they'll remember them.