The Fool's Café

Just before Christmas we decided that we needed to up our game in the "be a fun parent" realm so we came up with the 12 Days of Holiday Fun that extended into the new year and wrapped up before school & work started again. The lengthy commitment (that we questioned if we were really serious about wanting to be that much fun) included simple things like looking at Christmas lights, hot chocolate and Holiday Mad Libs on the back porch, or surprising the kids with special ornaments to hang. 

A few others are worth documenting like our night at The Fool's Café and a Master Chef Jr. Grilled Cheese Challenge which must have its own post because I experience great difficulty when trying to limit the amount of pictures to include ; ) 

The Fool's Café was recommended to me by a friend who had done it with their own family. It is a printable from a blog I love called The Dating Divas. In order to enjoy on various occasions, I laminated all the pieces & we got to work planning our evening! We told the kids that afternoon that they would need to come to dinner in a costume but they were not aware that we would be in costume too. They were quite surprised! 

In short, it is a restaurant style dinner experience where nothing happens as expected. When our "guests" arrived, they were seated at the table and then rolled a dice to see what their plate and eating utensil would be. We had them numbered on the counter to be delivered to each guest. Some combinations were a muffin tin and tablespoon size measuring spoon or baking sheet with tongs. They each received a menu with the words "wacky, silly, loco, looney" etc with numbers. Next they had to fill in the spaces to place their orders for each course unaware of what each number represented since they couldn't see our cheat sheet. This resulted in some eating marshmallows and cucumbers for an appetizer with noodles and tater tots for dessert. Certainly has the potential to be stressful for picky eaters but our bunch decided to giggle instead!

Robby and I sported the socks my brother Scott bought us for Christmas. Pencils for the teacher and some Office Convict Mike socks that said "and I never got caught neither!" I think Rob should start styling his hair like that on a regular basis.

We had a box of challenge cards that we pulled out when people broke random rules that we made up in the moment. Rob was in charge of that and had me laughing. Charlotte got stuck with eating without her hands while Owen enjoyed eating with an ice cream scoop from a skillet. 

Robby ate from an espresso cup with chopsticks and drank from a teapot....that was my favorite!

Drinking from a measuring cup is always fun too! I had the worst experience imaginable for those who don't like their food to touch and enjoyed a seven layer dip of all the options minus the napkin. It reminded me of the movie Elf when he pours syrup in the bag of noodles. 

Now these two were quite handsome....who doesn't love a man in suspenders? 

Anson had a dog tail and Arlo reluctantly wore the owl costume I made from Halloween 2013. 

We should have given the girls some guidelines because they showed up with eyeliner, their undies over their jammie pants and socks stuffed in other places which is much like I remember doing as kids with my silly friends! Eloise carried deodorant to the table and liberally applied once she was seated. Ha! 

Over all, it was a HILARIOUS evening and we felt like we had nailed it as fun parents! In the picture below, I just noticed that the mistletoe hanging behind Rob's head makes it look like he has an old TV antenna attached, haha!