Penguin Girl followed her stomach and decided on birthday fondue. I picked up Penguin Girl and W after school and went to have frozen yogurt to kill some time. Then we headed off to pick up A whose school lets out a bit later. After that, it was off to the Melting Pot.
I made a reservation and told them it was for a birthday so they put us in a private room. I told them that the plan was to first have cheese fondue so they could report to their parents that they ate some real food. The cheese would be followed by dessert fondue. They could pick two flavors of each. The whole experience was beyond thrilling for them.
They chose cheddar and a spinach-artichoke for the cheese course. The girls were very captivated by the server's tabletop preparation of the cheese mixtures. The dippers consisted of fresh veggies, green apples, bread, and tortilla chips. Although they sort of balked at the idea of spinach-artichoke, that turned out to be the favorite. The cheddar was just too beer-y tasting for them.
After much deliberation, they decided on s'mores and cookies-n-cream. Again, the preparation was very impressive. It included the pouring of flaming liquid into each pot of chocolate. Once they saw the dippers, they all agreed that they were in heaven. There were pedestrian items like graham crackers, bananas, and strawberries. There were also brownies, cheesecake, rice krispie cubes, cinnamon dusted marshmallows, and chocolate crumb dusted marshmallows.
Towards the end, it was pretty obvious that we could not possibly finish. W asked if we could bring it home. Can you bring fondue home? Why, yes you can. The server brought some boxes and we took home a box of cheese with tortilla chips and a box of chocolate with a little bit of everything.
We were supposed to go to the movies but it turned out the only kids' movie available was Finding Nemo in 3D. The girls opted to watch videos at home. They basically had an all-nighter of Harry Potter movies. At 4:30 in the morning, I woke up to thumping around upstairs. I put the kibosh on that pretty quickly. They got up for the day at a decent hour. After pancakes for breakfast, they ran around outside until it was time to go.
Happy birthday, Penguin Girl! I can't believe you're 9!
