When it comes to family activites, I find that I’m usually hanging out to dry. My oldest child likes science as does my wife, so we usually go to science museums.
They like them, but the truth is that aside from being very boring, how many times am I going to see a ball stay suspended by moving air? And then my wife wants to buy a pass to get a discount later. In order to break even we’d have to go five more times when I’d pay not to go again.
The reason I usually hold my tongue is because everyone else likes the science museums and it’s not like I don’t get to do what I want to other times. I work from home, go to the gym, and once a year I go on a trip without the kids (sometimes without my wife) and I recently started playing golf.
However, when we went to Houston earlier this year, I told my wife I wanted to check out the Space Museum, and that we were all getting astronaut ice cream.
Houston Space Museum Detour
I figured this would still stimulate everyone’s science gland but be different. Plus, I’ve always wanted to try space ice cream. I anticipate that it’ll be mediocre, but I’m still looking forward to trying it.
On the way there, my wife decided that we were going to check out the Children’s Science Museum instead. It was impressive compared to the others, but I was ready to check out and take a nap five minutes into it.
Afterward, I told my wife that I’m not going to another science museum until we do what I want to do and that was go to an art museum or a really nice restaurant. Preferably both.
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Reunion Tower in Dallas, Texas
For Father’s Day my wife made plans for us to go to Dallas (we were visiting family nearby) to do both of those things.
Earlier that day my wife showed me the outfit she bought for dinner. She’s at an awkward size between baby weight and pre-baby weight and doesn’t want to spend a lot of money on clothes, but I couldn’t let the outfit she bought stand, so I told her, “you can’t wear a $4 outfit to a $200 dinner.” And so we went shopping. The problem with cheap clothes is that they usually stink. After two hours we went to an expensive store and everything fit very well. To her dismay she spent $177, but she looked great, and nice clothes can be tailored and taken in later. Plus, they last longer.
All the shopping led to us not making it to the art museum, but I really couldn’t care less. I was just glad we were doing what I wanted for a change as a family.
When we arrived at Reunion Tower we had to take the elevator down to the hostess who then sent us more than 500 feet up to the restaurant, which revolved to offer a full view of the city of Dallas every 55 minutes.
As we ordered, I told the girls the same rules I have every time I take them some place new: if they try everything (they don’t have to finish anything) they can have any dessert they want.
We had a waiter who had two assistants and then there was the bus staff. You pay a lot, but you get even more.
After selecting my dinner I asked the waiter to bring me a glass of wine he thought would best suit my meal. Following this, our waiter-in-chief, David, came over to ask what I normally drink. I told him I didn’t, so he brought me the most generic glass of wine for dinner and then let me sample the other more sophisticated wines while teaching me some stuff I didn’t really understand. To me, they all tasted the same, but I think he saved me about $6; plus I scored a half glass of wine for free!
With nice restaurants, the service is a bit slower than at our normal places, but much more attentive, and the kids were great even without a clown to color on the menu or their chicken fingers being rushed out super fast.
My 9 and 4-year-old tried mushrooms, chicken dumplings, lobster, and their $55 steak dinner (split, of course). Before we ordered dessert the wine started to take and everything began to seem fairly humorous to me, including when my middle child asked if she could crawl under the table for a little while.
Their behavior was to my expectations and their willingness to try everything led to their reward of a brownie while the adults split a piece of crumbling peach pie that was fantastic.
$313 later, I’m ready to go there again; just not this year.
