Treebaby's Teardrop: June's Resturaunt of Romance

Every now and then as a parent you get a glimmer that you might be doing something right. Last Sunday we knew the kids were up to something. They had been holding secret meetings off and on for the last few weeks. Well, whatever they were up to was obviously going down on Sunday. We played along with their strange questions such as, "What time does the sun go down?" and "What will the weather be like tonight?" and let them do their thing. We have an apartment above our garage that is currently unoccupied and they spent the entire day up there doing heaven knows what.
About 6:30 pm they came to us and Andrew said, "Will you please follow me?" We followed him to the balcony on our house. There was a sign on the door that read "June's Restaurant of Romance." When we went outside, they had set up a table, complete with tablecloth, candles, menus, candy bowls and salad. Romantic music was playing through the window. Our menus indicated that it would be a three course meal with pasta and muffin cake. They had found matching plates, bowls, forks, glasses and everything, which in our house is a real tough thing to do. They acted as our servers, bringing us rolls and each course and filling our glasses with sparkling juice.
They kept saying, "Well leave you alone now for your romantic dinner" only to reappear about 10 seconds later to see if we were enjoying everything. We were tickled pink. The food was great. It is nice that they are older and can cook a few simple things on their own. We couldn't believe what they had accomplished together.
We had gone to Target earlier to get Meagan a new puzzle. While Meagan was successfully deterring me by being unusually indecisive, Andrew and Amanda were doing all the shopping. Amanda had received a gift card for her birthday and she spent the entire thing on our dinner. She says the lady at the checkout may have helped her out a bit because she thought she didn't have enough money. Did you know you can't buy a lighter if you are under sixteen. Amanda does now.
They were missing a few items and recruited the help of Grandpa H., who snuck out with Amanda after lunch to buy a CD and pasta sauce. Thanks for your help! The music added wonderful ambiance.
I'm so proud of them, they were thoughtful, kind, cooperative, generous, industrious, thrifty, crafty, and just damn cute. How often does that happen?

See our pretty table....with Meagan in the background. The batteries in the camera died before I could get a good picture of her.