our valentine's adventure...

this week we had decided to try to go out to eat on valentine's day... since we didn't have a sitter for the kids, i decided it would probably be a good idea to try to go for an early dinner (430ish)... we decided to drive to olive garden in fort wayne (about 40 mins away) since we had gift cards from the past two christmas's to use there... we pulled into the swamped parking lot about 20 mins to 5, and quickly realized there was no way to even get in the restaurant, let alone were we going to be able to get a table within an hour... since 30 mins is a long time to wait with jenny in an "empty" waiting area, we decided that we didn't want to wait that long, so we thought we'd try red lobster since the gift cards would work there too... thanks to our TomTom GPS, we were able to use the back streets to end up on the right side of the road passing red lobster, and as we approached it, we decided that we were going to stay on the road - the driveway was double stacked with vehicles headed in and there were cars parked on the grass... so we decided to head to the IHOP we had seen on colliseum and coldwater - as we pulled into the IHOP, we saw that chilis looked like they still had a lot of parking, so we drove down the parking lot and i ran inside... from the outside, they looked pretty empty and i had no problems getting to the hostess once inside, but she said the wait was about 50-55 mins, so i decided that IHOP would have to do... we went back across the parking lot and went inside... they looked pretty full, but they had a back section that was still empty, so they seated us there... a few minutes later they seated an older couple at the table behind me... the gentleman came over and chatted with us for a minute (asked about the kids, etc), then returned to his table... throughout the meal i could hear snippets of their conversation - observing us and another couple w/ a baby sitting across from us... at one point i thought to myself, i wonder if they're one of those older couples who likes to pick up the check for another customer - maybe they'll pay for our dinner... but since i often have random thoughts like that, i didn't think anything of it again until our waitress came over and told us we were "good to go"... i looked at her and asked if we could have our check and she said "no"... she said it had been taken care of, and she left... i could hear the couple behind me getting up to leave, and realized that my random thought had actually come to fruition! after they left, the waitress came back over and told us what had happened - she was thrilled! she said that they had made her night when they asked for our bill and that they had tipped her "crazy" - they had renewed her faith in the goodness of people... it was a pretty awesome trip, considering, and the food was delicious too! (and of course the coffee was good!) thanks to that older couple's generosity, we were able to have lunch out again today (since we had received a gift of money with a valentine's card in the mail yesterday)! yeah for yummy chinese food!