We're kick(box)ing the Spur into touch

Yesterday we headed to Greenstone Mall to do our usual dose of weekend admin and shopping. On the way, the littlest Haggard fell asleep, so I took him and Daniel to the Spur, while Brett did his admin - the idea being that the boys would play, we'd have a decent-ish meal, and all live happily ever after...

Well...

The restaurant was completely packed, which is great for the Spur, but it meant that we couldn't sit anywhere near the kiddies' play area. All well and good - space is limited, and Daniel could find his way back to us when he wanted to. Matthew is too little to see over the tables and chairs etc, and is too little to be seen too, so when he came looking for us, crying, he got lost in the maze of tables. Just as well ExMi was there too with her family - she spotted him and kindly brought him back to us. That's not the Spur's fault though - it was our problem, I do understand.

Now I know weekends are meant for families to spend quality time together - and we do. But there's merit to restaurants with playgrounds - a whole mealtime is a long time for two active little boys to sit still, and there's no denying that it's a relief for Mom and Dad to have some time to eat a meal relatively undisturbed. The Spur playgrounds have climbing walls, trampolines, blackboards and climbing apparatus, which are all great.

However, what I fundamentally disagree with is the barrage of PlayStation consoles in the play area - most particularly the one with the kickboxing game, to which Daniel migrated like the proverbial moth to a flame. Scary thing is, even though he's never played anything like that before (we don't let our boys play violent games on our Wii), by the time I saw what he was playing, he was getting perfect scores. By that time, his brother was awake, so I asked Daniel to go away from the games, and to play with his brother.

Which was when it really struck home why I don't let them play games like that at home. Within two minutes of them playing one another, Daniel was kickboxing his brother, and wrestling him to the ground, far more forcefully than I've ever seen him do. Which was when they were brought out of the play area, to sit with us until we were finished.

Apart from the PlayStation issue, I left the restaurant with a raging headache - the noise of the crowds was clearly not sufficiently stressful - we had to have loud 80s music blasted at us as well, with the odd birthday singing and clapping as well, all spiced up with crying children, banging from the open kitchen, slow service because of the busy-ness (and the resulting grumpy husband)... and then there was the fun of trying to walk in the greasy floor. I might sound like a bit of a complaining Mother Grundy here, and I do understand that restaurants use different tools to create atmosphere, but the only word to describe my Sunday Spur experience was: mayhem.

So... we won't be going back. Definitely not soon. Maybe never. Even though my fillet was very tasty...