On Saturday, we got to experience something my kids had been looking forward to for weeks: the second Despicable Me movie. My youngest choose it as his birthday outing. Normally, we let them choose between going out to eat or going to a movie. Nine times out of ten, they choose the movie.
We had planned, as we usually do, to take in the movie at the local movie theater for the matinée showing, which is the least expensive way to do it. Instead, though a misunderstanding with some friends, we wound up driving 45 minutes away to a movie tavern place. Our budget matinée turned into the 3D version of the film plus a very expensive lunch.
The movie was great, and so was the food, although it was a little bit hard to eat in the dark. My six-year-old handed me a wet wipe packet, which I opened for him at the end of his pizza meal, only to unleash an explosion of stinky parmesan cheese. Yes, the kids pizza meals came with little packets of cheese, and we used real silver wear. It was that kind of place.
Although the other family remarked how reasonable the pricing was, I still had buyers guilt. I tried (and failed) not to calculate the fact that money spent on the bottle of water I was holding could have, in fact, bought me an entire case of water at Target.
Fortunately, I was able to sort of redeem things when my husband wanted to stop at the IKEA, which was close to the movie tavern. IKEA was running a promotion for free kids meals. So, my husband and I got our free drinks, the kids got their free meals, and we were good to go. The movie tavern lunches were so large, that we still weren’t hungry for dinner.
I’m torn. I hated spending that much money at the movie tavern, but at the same time, everyone in my family really enjoyed it.