It's my birthday, got my car fixed...

Ry Ry is officially a 3 year old. The big guy celebrated his birthday with a multi-day extravaganza, which included a trip to Pump-it-Up with some buddies, a barbeque with family, multiple Easter Egg hunts and finally dinner with more family. He had people sing “Happy Birthday” to him a minimum of 4 times that I know of. There may have been a few others in there as well.

Through it all, the kid loves being serenaded. You should see the grin on him when those candles are glowing on a cake, cupcake, pie, whatever. He’s either a fledgling pyromaniac or narcissist, I haven’t quite figured it out.

One of the things we decided to do for him this year, was to allow him to decide where we had dinner. He selected Benihana, the Japanese “teppanyaki” restaurant. He selected this place because “they sing to me,” he says.

Rather, they have two or three of the wait staff rattle off a moving rendition of “Happy Birthday”, accompanied by a tambourine. The food tastes like a marinated tambourine, just cut up into bite size pieces.

You may $25 to $40 for them to cut your food for you essentially. All of this is done while a knife-wielding “chef” flings his cutlery in the air. If you’re lucky, he doesn’t drop anything. Our chef’s nametag proudly proclaimed that “Sergio” would be preparing our dinner for Ry’s special meal.

I’ll go out on a limb and say that I suspect that Sergio does not hail from the land of the rising sun. He proved to be a worthy showman, dazzling the kids with his dexterity with knife and spatula. We’ve seen the show a couple of times before for Karsyn’s birthday (we think she may have influenced Ry’s dinner location decision), so we knew what to expect.

The fact that we knew what was coming should tell you a thing or two about our dining out habits.

In any case, the egg yolk rooster, shrimp tail flip into the hat and onion volcano were old hat even for a tepanyaki veteran like Ryan, but they still giggle every time they see it. So that makes up for the insane bill. Well, at least until the Visa bill arrives.

I hope this is one of those things that he remembers when he grows up to be old and crotchety. “My parents used to take us to this Japanese place, where they flung knives and made onion volcanoes…it was pretty cool!” Bad food aside, it was pretty cool.