Time for Prizes

The boys earned their trip to Chuck E Cheese! Woo-hoo!

We have a regular routine when we go to Chuck E. Cheese. We come in, and I have a couple of coins left over from last time to distribute while I purchase the new round of pizza and fun. Boys romp off to remove shoes and get playing. I order and find a table to act as Home Base, where I set up shop (including going and finding the removed shoes).

The boys then play until the pizza comes. Then Joey comes and eats pizza, while Andy flits from table to games and back taking fleeting bites of sausage and cheese. When the pizza is gone, we play a little longer, usually about 25 tokens' worth.

Then it is Prize Time. The boys put on their shoes and coats, we clean up, and we take our tickets and ticket slips to the counter. We pick out prizes, and go home.

It works really, really well. It is still a little odd to me to sit and read or write and not know exactly where both boys are at every single moment, but we'll all live through it. I do tend to sit in one of a select group of tables to make it easier for Joey to find me, and easier for me to play air hockey with him without having our coats stolen. It also happens to have the best and widest view of the floor, so I can look up at any given moment and make a good sweep to see where they both are. But anyway...

It was really crowded yesterday. Sunday afternoons are normally a good time, nice and quiet, but yesterday the place was loaded up with four birthday parties, and every seat in the house occupied. Madhouse. I ran out of spare coins before I got more, because the registers were down. People were everywhere. I had a ten-minute wait to snatch up a table (which, fortunately, appeared in my select group, yay!), so here came the pizza just as I got set up. Finding boys? Aye-yai-yai. Did I mention there were people everywhere?

When there are lots of people in a Chuck E. Cheese, one thing that mysteriously happens is the skee ball balls disappear. I don't know why. However, it is highly annoying to try to play skee ball without the full number of balls. The more tired Joey got, the more frustrated he became with the lost balls. And did I mention how many people were there? Crowds are not a good thing.

So Joey plops down across from me, his eyes starting to look a little teary and ready to melt, and he says, "Time for prizes!"

Yep, time to go, little man. Good call.