A.J.'s mini-party.

After picking A.J. up from school yesterday afternoon, he had an assignment to finish: decide where he wanted to eat out for his special birthday dinner. From a long list of available choices I gave him, he picked Outback Steakhouse. I admit, I was surprised but very happy with his choice - it had been a looooong time since we'd eaten there. :-)

We met Heather at 5:00pm. Since A.J.'s party won't be until the middle of September (just too much crammed into all the weekends between now and then), we wanted to go ahead and give him the gifts we had, plus the gifts from our moms.

The restaurant was not crowded yet because of the early dinner time, and that was a nice thing. It did take a while longer than expected for our food to come out, but our waitress was so nice and friendly. Right from the get-go, the staff knew that it was A.J.'s birthday - it was kinda hard to MISS that fact, what with Heather and I walking in under PILES of presents. ;-)

The boys suckered a different waitress into giving them both TWO animals filled with crayons. A.J. played with his platypus and alligator while Jack banged his shark and bird around. But don't the platypus and the alligator look eerily related? ;-)

A.J. had a 'Boomerang Cheeseburger and Aussie Chips,' and Jack chose 'Kookaburra Chicken Fingers and Aussie Chips.' I had the Queensland salad, but I didn't pay attention to the description underneath; I was expecting a grilled breast of chicken atop salad greens, and instead I had ordered a seasoned chicken salad. It was okay, but it wasn't what I was wanting.

When everyone was finished eating (which nearly KILLED A.J. and Jack to wait for us to finish a decent amount of food, by the way), it was time for A.J. to begin opening his presents. The folks around us got pretty tired of the camera flashes, I'm sure, but hey - you only turn 7 once!


A.J. really gets into opening his gifts!

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