Restaurant Manners - Shoes Off?

We rarely go out to eat, and when the whole side of Zach's family was together recently, they decided to go out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant.  Throughout the day, I was talking to Adlyn about having good manners at the restaurant, and what that meant.  She has been cluing in on manners lately, so I thought this would be a great experience for her.  Adlyn also told me that she wanted to have a taco for dinner that night.

She was very excited about going out to eat, and when we got out of the truck, she held my hand as we went inside.  As soon as she walked in to the front door, she paused and looked at me.  Adlyn doesn't say a lot of words, but I knew exactly what she way saying.  She wanted to know if she should take her shoes off since we were going inside.  I had to smile.  Wow - she was really thinking about everything she needed to do to be polite!  I have to give her credit for that.  She takes her shoes off at our house, at our neighbor's house (whom she visits almost daily), at Grandma's house, so why not at the restaurant? 

She was fairly good throughout dinner, and we shared tacos and had a great time.  Good job Adlyn, perhaps we'll go out to dinner again soon!

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I want to go back and tell a restaurant story from when the kids were about 7 months old.  I drove to Salt Lake to meet Zach who was at a trade show for work.  We had some things to pick up at Babies R Us, and after that, we went out to eat at Chili's or Applebee's, or someplace like that.  We wouldn't typically go out to eat, but we were traveling and we didn't have other options to cook something at our hotel.  We could have ordered in pizza, which we didn't want to do, but maybe we should have!

We took the kids in with us, sat down, and ordered our food.  I really don't think the kids were being disruptive...but maybe my perspective is skewed after having twins.  Maybe my sense of normalcy in regards to chaos isn't normal for the wait staff.  Let's just say, we were quickly brought our ticket before we were even asked if we'd like dessert.  We were also given 'take home boxes' before we were half-way done with our meal.  We took the 'subtle' hints, hurried, and left.  Zach and I both had a good laugh, and we'll remember that one!  And next time, we'll just order the pizza.