On our recent trip to New Orleans we stopped at a Cracker Barrel restaurant for lunch since it’s the kind of place that we can sit down and spend some time off the road and it gives Caroline a chance to stretch her legs and a place for us to easily feed her.

If your familiar with Cracker Barrel restaurants you know that to get to the eating area you have to walk through the “Old Country Store”. Before going in we always have the discussion with the boys that we are here for food, not toys, so just forget about it. You can look but that’s it. Andrew has a little problem with this and he’s always trying to angle for something.

After eating lunch we were walking around the store and the boys were looking at stuff and Alex started in with the whining. “I want a toy,” “I really wish I could just have this” holding up something or other. Of course we weren’t moved by this and were slightly annoyed but then we came across a bunch of the Invisible Ink activity books. They would be perfect for working on during the rest of the drive.

Jen showed Alex a couple of the them and even offered to get him one if he wanted. He got a really long face and complained some more how he wanted to get a toy instead so Jen told him that if he wasn’t going to appreciate the book then we didn’t have to get anything.

The whole time this was going on Andrew was watching and looking at some toys of his own. He picked up an old fashioned battery powered metal horse racing set and walked over to Jen and said,

“Mom, I would really appreciate this if you got it for me.”

I give him a perfect 10 for style points but he still didn’t get the horse racing set.