My idea of fast food is grabbing a $1 sandwich from the menu for everyone in the car through the drive thru on a busy day. We do this maybe once or twice a month at most. We never go in a fast food or any other restaurant for various reasons. My reasons are the following: A family of 5 spends at least $20-40 dollars per visit for an out-to-eat experience (that's probably a low end estimate). Eating out is less healthy than what you can prepare at home. There are a great deal of distractions when eating out that actually do not foster conversations with our children (at least in our experience). Finally, a cranky baby/toddler can give you indigestion (I learned that when the other two were small). I'm not really sounding like a fast food advocate I know but.....today I put aside all my reasons against going out to eat.
(Michael is sad because he is not big enough for the slide, but he got over it really quick.)
My children are great kids, I really don't praise them enough. Well, I do to their face, just not to other people. We love them so much, they really are gifts from God and our treasures. My mom always had this thing she did---if we were really good when we were out with her and received compliments on our behavior from other people, we received something really good. Twice in the past few days, my children have received raves about their manners and behavior from others (myself included). They've been helpful, polite and considerate. (It's not like that all the time, they are human.)
So we decided to treat them to McDonald's INSIDE and then time on the playground afterwards. It was like we had taken them to Disneyworld (that's probably an exaggeration, but they did have fun). Now don't read this wrong...we take our kids out places, just not McDonald's. I would rather my kid run around in nature than a plastic playground. But every once in a while, it's awesome. They see it as a treat and something special. They get some plastic toy from some movie we'll probably never see and get chicken nuggets, soda and french fries. They had a blast playing outside, it was great to surprise them especially since they weren't even expecting it. Something out of the ordinary to reward extraordinary kids!