A Kooky Little Paradise: Ode to Darin

Last week we celebrated Darin's birthday. We had a great time and this birthday was a very memorable one. While Darin was at work, the babies and I snuck out and got him some balloons, his favorite candy (jelly belly's), cake, and mint oreo Ben & Jerry's. He was surprised to come home to see the suite all decorated for the special day. He wanted to go out to eat at the Texas Roadhouse so we packed up the kids and headed out.

We were really enjoying our dinner and the babies were having a fantastic time. There were two little girls and their mom who came over and doted on them a little bit as they sat in their high chairs--we didn't think too much of it.

I had told our waitress that it was Darin's birthday and toward the end of our meal she brought the other servers over and they made Darin sit on this western saddle that was mounted on a wooden sawhorse. She called for everyone's attention and asked them to give him a "Texas Yee-Haw" and everyone responded with a loud whoop. It was then that I noticed that Cameron's face began to change from a smile to a grimace. Apparently everyone else noticed because they stopped Yee-Hawing and were looking at our babies. Cameron started crying worse then I have ever seen him. It wasn't even a real cry it was more of repeated very loud sobs. He couldn't catch his breath and tears were running down his cheeks. Dallin saw this and started screaming too. I grabbed Cameron and Darin grabbed Dallin and we calmed them down relatively quickly. The waiters and waitresses left and after a couple of attempts we saw that they weren't going to go back into their high chairs. We quickly finished our meal and the waitress came to our table. We were expecting her to hand us our bill but instead she said, "You don't have to pay."

"What?" Darin and I both said in unison.

"Someone else in the restaurant already paid for your meal. They asked me not to tell you who it is. There's really not much more than I can say other than that you don't have to pay."

This has never really happened to us before so we sat there stunned. I glanced around trying to figure out who had paid. I asked the waitress if she could thank the person and she said that she couldn't, they already left. Darin said that he saw that woman and her two daughters leave a couple of minutes previously and that it was probably them since they were talking to us for a while and since he saw them talking to the waitress before they left.

We left a generous tip on the table and left the restaurant in awe. Wow. A random person who we will probably never see again paid our fairly-expensive bill at a restaurant. Wow. Pay it forward. Someday I would like to do that to someone else kind of out of the blue like that.

What an interesting birthday Darin had. It was certainly unique.