Ryan and I had a nice dinner out last night. I was thinking it could be our last one for awhile! I was also thinking about a family tradition we had growing up.
Every year at Christmas time we had dinner at Lawry's. For the holidays, the restaurant hired "carolers" to sing to the patrons during their meals. The carolers dressed in Charles Dickens-like attire and were always very talented. We usually spent the first part of dinner trying to decide what requests we would make when they got to our table and almost never settled on just one. Luckily they indulged us and usually sang an extra song or two. My dad always tried to force them to take a tip (the gratuity kind, not the advice kind) even though they always ardently refused. It was against policy. But that didn't ever phase my dad!
For some reason, those are my best holiday memories of our family together, even more so than any of Christmas day. One year in particular we must've been having a good time. After dinner our server told us that our dessert was covered. Apparently the couple a few tables away thought we looked so fun that they wanted to buy us dessert. If you know our family, you'll know that was a GREAT way to get to our hearts. It was delicious. But more than that it's proof that we were so happy in that moment even somebody else noticed it. I will hold on to those memories forever.
