Teppanyaki

All Jaysen wanted for his birthday this year was to go to Sakura for dinner. For those of you that don't know about this restaurant, it is a Japanese Teppanyaki restaurant. You sit around a huge grill and a chef comes and cooks your dinner for you in front of you. Now, Jaysen's birthday is still a week away, so you can imagine my surprise when he walked in the door tonight and said, "Let's go tonight!" So....off we went. Landon was soooo excited to see the "show" that every five seconds he asked when they were going to bring our dinner out. Mackenzee was just plain awnry as usual.
And then....the show began with a big flame...bigger than the one above. Let's just say that Mackenzee was scared to DEATH so much that she had to sit on my lap, bear hugging me so tight I could barely breathe. She wouldn't even look. The ENTIRE time. As bad as I felt for her, I was honestly grateful because at least she sat still. :0) Landon LOVED it! And Jaysen did a bang up job of catching the flying shrimp in his mouth.
Needless to say, we are all extremely full. Though...I'm going to put my two cents in here at the end for those of you that might be interested in visiting this particular restaurant......

Jaysen and I first went to a Teppanyaki style restaurant for his 30th bday up in Boise. Landon went with us and it was great! Good food, great chefs doing great tricks with the spatulas and what not...and Jaysen and I went again this last summer up in Boise for our anniversary. We love it! Which is why Jaysen was thrilled to go to it for his birthday. It's fairly pricey for Chinese Food, but again...special occasions make it ok for me to fork out that much money for my children to NOT eat the food. :0) This place though....we tried to go last weekend after Landon's baptism but they were SO busy because apparently four of their cooks just didn't show up. So, we bailed and went out for Mexican. So, we made sure to get there early tonight so we would get a good seat without the long wait. Now, with these style restaurants, they seat about 10 people around one grill. So, if there are four of us, they usually have you wait a few minutes to see if they can fill up the other chairs before they fire up the grill. I understand that. So, they fill up the chairs and we finally get our soup and salad. Good times...the chef comes out and we get all geared up....and he wasn't NEARLY as good as the guys up in Boise. But, that's ok. I didn't need him to flip the salt shaker up in the air and catch it on his head....and I felt bad for when he tried to spin and flip the egg up in the air and instead of it dropping perfectly on the side of his spatula to crack open, it fell on the ground. Stuff happens. The show wasn't horrible...Landon was entertained. So, we eat our food and the restaurant is getting REALLY busy at this point. All 10 of us at the table are finished eating and we sat there for 20 minutes waiting for someone to bring us a bill. (Actually, our meal came with ice cream...and we never got it. But after 20 minutes, it's not worth it! We've got ice cream at home!) I asked TWO different bus boys about our check and neither of them knew what the crap was going on. Seriously...one of them said, "I just get people the drinks." Are you kidding me? There were about 15 people waiting for a table...if they actually brought us our bill so we could leave, those poor people who had been waiting for 20 minutes could have been seated. Sigh. If we were really naughty, our entire table could have walked out without paying and they wouldn't have even noticed. Even worse, the same lady that said she was missing four cooks last weekend told the lady at the table next to us that she was sorry they had to wait so long because, "four cooks didn't show up" so they were understaffed. Apparently it's THE excuse they use because they don't want to have a full staff. We got home TWO hours after we left for the restaurant...the restaurant is about 5 minutes away.

There...I've let it all out now. I don't feel better. I seriously spent some money tonight on DINNER and so to have such crappy service really annoyed me. Really good food though. So, for those of you in Twin Falls, maybe try it on a week night so you don't have to worry about this.

Happy eating!

My Landon...

...just loves to read! So, when I saw him sitting at the top of the steps a couple of days ago, I had to snap a picture. Pictures for me...are like capturing a memory. And I want him to always remember how much pleasure he has found in books. Santa brought him 5 books for Christmas and he's almost finished with one and already started in on another one. It's one of those traits that I am GLAD that he inherited from me. Others...not so glad, but this one is something he can use and enjoy his whole life.

My Baptism Day

Yesterday I got baptized. It felt good. I was nervous, but I did it. I went out to eat lunch with Mandy and everybody before the baptism. I ate macaroni and cheese, pizza, and green beans and corn. It was good.

Lots of people came to my baptism because I have a big family. It made me nervous, but I was glad they came. After I was baptized I felt great! I was worried the water would get in my eyes, but I just rubbed it out.

And now I am a real member of the church. And I can't make mistakes. But if I do, I have to say sorry and mean it! That's what my mom says.

Thank you for coming to my baptism. I love you very much.

Ashlee side note: I can't believe my baby got baptized. It's wierd to feel so many different things all at once. It was so great to see so many people there to support Landon on his big day. He has so much family now, he's a bit spoiled. We counted last night and realized he has 7 grandma's (great grandma's included). That's crazy! I honestly think we had the biggest crowd at the baptism last night. And he knew you were all there for him, which made his day that much more special. So, thank you!

Tea Time!

Jaysen and I woke up this morning to Landon and Mackenzee having a tea party. It was rather impressive. Kenzee got a princess tea set from Santa for Christmas and so Landon must have pulled it out and set it all up. Kenzee only pulls everything out of the container and leaves a mess of it on the floor. :0) Anyway....tea cups full of water, plates of goldfish crackers and bowls of fruit snacks. I'd say it was a pretty nice spread. My favorite part about it was that Landon even got out Teddy and Sparky (he's the monster) to participate.

Actually, my favorite part is that Landon would do all of this to play with his sister. He just adores her and she him. And that he would have a "girly" tea party with her and set it all up so they could play just makes me warm and fuzzy. Sometimes....I actually think about keeping him for a little longer. :0)

Thanks Grandma!

Today, Grandma Burnham took Landon to get his baptism scriptures. I had already bought him the bag for them and was going to take him on his baptism day to get the scriptures, but found out that it is tradition in the Burnham family for Rita to get the kids their scriptures. So, we decided to just all go together to get them.

Since there was no option for RED scriptures (burgundy was NOT going to be sufficient), Landon chose the blue ones. And, he also went for the quad vs. seperate books. Grandma even got him a scripture marker and a book mark so he's totally ready for church on Sunday!

And not to be outdone by her brother...Mackenzee gave Grandma the "PLEEEAAASSEE" look and ended up getting this pink teddy bear which she has name PINK. Sigh.

Seriously though, he is so excited to have gotten these. In the car he said, "Mom, this is silver on here!" My favorite though was, "what does H-o-s and J-u-d mean?" Yeah...I had to explain a little to him about how the books worked. But I am truly enjoying these one on one moments we are getting to have because of all of this. It's such a special time for him, and such an important time all at once. I'm so glad I get to share in it with him.

Homecoming!

Yay! My Landon finally comes home today! He's been gone for a week and we've missed him TERRIBLY so! It' just not the same without him around. Sniff Sniff. So, we are counting down the hours until we get him back. Tick tock. Sigh. It's not going quick enough!

Santa Came!

Yesssss!!!!!

That's what came out of my daughters mouth when she saw what Santa brought her. She's never said that before. It was awesome. Though all she truly cared about was the Hello Kitty bandaids and the chapstick. Sigh.

Landon was thrilled to see that Santa had deemed him "nice" after he saw a Wii sitting next to the TV. It did have a large sign on it though that said it was for the Burnham FAMILY. I don't think he paid much attention to it. :0)

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! Ours was great as we were able to spend the time with both of our families. It was great to have all of my siblings here, the cousins had such a great time playing together. And little Breanna Burnham is now 12! Holy cow! She was totally decked out in make up last night and everything. She's still the same Breanna though. :0)

Merry Christmas!