Happy Birthday to Me, a little belated

My birthday was on March 1, but because we were on our way to El Salvador that day it was decided that the celebration wouuld be postponed until sometime later. That amount of time was ambiguous, and truthfully I figured that it would just be forgotten. However, leave it to my sweet DH to not forget how important birthdays are to me! Last night he declared that we were going to celebrate my birthday, and asked me where I wanted to go. Well, a few years ago just after some friends of ours' daughter died, I had wanted to take them out to help celebrate my birthday as sort of diversion. We all went to Benihana's, and although I'm not sure if it was really a diversion for the family we were with (what really could be in such a sad situation?!), we had a good time watching our food being cooked at our table, trying to eat with chopsticks, and experiencing something different.

So I decided that we should go to Benihana's again, this time as a family of 5 instead of 4. So off we went. DH was thoughtful and called ahead for a reservation, so we didn't have to wait at all when we got there. We were seated with another family of 4, that appeared to be mom, dad, 1 teenage daughter, and one 8 or 9 year old daughter. They were not very talkative, and actually I thought they didn't seem very happy. At any rate, we didn't interact too much. I was more interested in Grace's reaction to the whole grilling at the table thing. She surprisingly liked the soup, and ate the entire bowl! That was good, because that's about all she ate, with the exeception of my complimentary birthday bowl of chocolate ice cream that she ate at the end of the meal.

So how did she react? Well, really not too much at all. She was interested in watching our chef (I guess that's what you'd call him?), but not overly intersted. I thought she would get excited watching him cook, flipping the spices and trying to entertain the table guests. She wasn't too impressed. Mostly she just ate her soup. The other girls liked it though, and all of us tried sushi. My first time, along with DD1 and DD2's first. DH had had it before. I can't say that I hated it. It was more of a feeling of "why would I order this as it's nothing special" feeling. I think DD1 felt the same way I did. DD2 didn't like it, and even took the salmon off to finish up the one roll she had.

DD1 and DH ended up eating most of the shrimp and steak, and both said they were stuffed. I ate a little shrimp and steak, but mostly chicken. I really liked the fried rice, and the salad. I think although it wasn't the best birthday I've ever had, it was a nice time. We bought an about to be expired mini birthday cake at Miejer to top off the evening, but alas, we didn't even slice it. Everyone was too full, and it was too late by the time got home. So another birthday celebration behind me. The good thing about birthdays is that there'll be another one next year!