I miss the old days of blogging when everyone had a blogspot family blog with photos of everyday life, a widget full of their favorite songs that autoplayed when you opened the page, and a blogroll of their friends’ blogs. I loved discovering old friends and catching up on what they were doing through their cute pictures of family adventures. I loved it when blogs were about telling stories and sharing experiences.

Now it seems like blogging is all about pageviews, sponsored posts, affiliate links, and SEO. The family blogs were abandoned for social media. We share snapshots instead of stories, how-tos instead of here is my life, and tweets instead of time together. Can we get back to storytelling and family adventures?

We had a fantastic FHE last night. Beth and Bree are in California with their high school orchestra, so we loaded up Babs, Joy, and Chuck in the truck and headed up the canyon. I had to do some location scouting for a film I’m working on for a school project, so we made it a family affair, exploring the canyon and taking plenty of photos to bring back to my group. (Don’t we all love group projects???)

My lens was so horribly dirty that all of my photos look like this: one central spot in focus and the rest a blur from a lens completely covered in smudges. Also, the canyon is even more dead and brown than I expected. It’s a good thing I don’t have to turn in my location scouting photos.

Steve is one of the only people in the world still playing Pokemon Go, and he’s got our whole family still playing along with him. While I looked for good hammocking trees and fishing bridges with the help of Joy and Chuck, Babs and Steve searched for Bulbasaurs and Magikarps. You know they’ve gotta catch ’em all.

When I had everything I needed and Babs was out of pokeballs, it was time to find a pokestop and some food. We were up Provo Canyon and had a Riverwoods gift card, so we decided it was a great time to introduce our little sweeties to sushi at Happy Sumo. Let’s just say we don’t feel the need to go back anytime soon.

Joy is loving all things Japanese lately, even taking a Japanese class at school and creating her own manga for a class project, and she said the sushi was delicious but she wouldn’t ever order it for herself. She was content with her teriyaki beef bowl. Of course, the veggies were covered in batter and deep fried, so who wouldn’t be content with that?

Chuck tried a tiny corner of a Vegas Roll and could barely get over the idea of eating sushi to even get it to her mouth. We tried to tell her it wasn’t real sushi, but she didn’t really care that it was deep fried and delicious. She was really excited about her teriyaki chicken bowl and dipping everything into any sauce she could find – not so much about sushi.

Babs discovered she loves sweet and sour chicken as much as I do – which is not at all – and we had no idea! She even politely answered the waitress positively when asked if everything was tasting okay. It wasn’t until we were getting ready to leave that she mentioned she never needs to order that again. She was happy to end the night with ice cream to make up for the whole plate of food she ate and hated.

This is obviously not our sushi. I just really love crab won tons and couldn’t pass them up.

Am I the only one who feels like a horrible parent when my kids suffer in silence? We won the gift card that was paying for this meal, so we weren’t even spending any money. For me that’s the perfect time to try new things and not feel bad if I don’t like them, but my sweet girl was along for the ride and too nice to say anything negative. I would have happily ordered Babs something she could actually enjoy.

I’m super proud that she has learned to politely eat whatever is being served, and I really appreciate that when I spend time sweating over a hot stove to make dinner, but I wish she wasn’t silently hating the food she ordered when we were trying to do something special and fun. Even the veggies served with her meal ended up being the few veggies she hates all combined into one horrifying mix!

I keep thinking about it and wondering what I should have done to make her experience better. Pressed more when I asked how it was? Read her mind and ordered her something new? Deterred her from her menu choice because it’s something I don’t like? None of those seems like a very good option. While I don’t believe my job is to rescue her from every unpleasantness in life, I do want her to know it’s okay to speak her mind and that her needs matter.

Overall it was a fantastic night and everyone had a blast. Chuck asked if our next dining out adventure could include Mo’ Bettah’s instead, and I’ve gotta say, I agree. I’m not really a sushi fan either, but Hawaiian-style teriyaki? Yes, please.

Always,
Melanie