Dining al fresco with my babies

Tonight Dennis had to work late, which meant that I was on solo dinner, bath, and bedtime duty for the kids. So I thought that the kids and I would do something special together! Our dinnertime is usually at 5:30, so the first special thing was that we played outside until 6:15 -- craziness! ;-)

Then we came inside, and Oliver helped me fry some shrimp. He mixed flour, garlic powder, salt, red pepper, and black pepper in a ziploc bag, then he added the shrimp and shook it up to coat it. [For reasons probably obvious to you, I wasn't able to take pictures of him helping me.]

This is our finished product! Trust me, it makes up in taste what it lacks in visual appeal. :-)















I had shrimp, pasta, and tomatoes. Mmm, doesn't that look yummy?















Oliver and Buttercup enjoyed their dinners, too. Buttercup had pasta with spaghetti sauce (in case you can't tell from the sauce smeared all over her mouth), shrimp, and fruit.















And Oliver had pasta with butter and cheese, shrimp, fruit, and carrot sticks.















Oliver saved his strawberries for later, but Buttercup ate hers with dinner -- stems and all. Oops!















The kids really seemed to enjoy our dinner date. Several times while we ate, Oliver said, "Mama, I just love you," and even the Princess was very calm and ate everything on her plate. We'll definitely have to do this again! :-)