A day of disappointments

No photos today :-( Just complaints about products and services that I feel you all should be warned about:

We ate breakfast at Le Boulanger, a local chain specializing in pastries, baked goods and sandwiches. Sounds good so far, right? They serve my favorite brand of coffee - Tully's. However, everytime we go there, something always goes wrong with the order.

1. They served us expired milk cartons - my kids usually don't complain but both said that the milk tasted sour and when I looked at the freshness date, it was 1 week expired.
2. They are always out of brewed coffee.
3. They always forget to make the hot sandwich we order. And when I do go up to the counter to remind them, they rush the order and end up putting it on the wrong kind of bread. Today we waited 15 minutes for our sandwich even though we were 1 of four customers there and the others have been served.
4. Tables are always dirty and not wiped down.
5. Workers are grumpy and totally not friendly.
6. Pastries are overpriced and dry.

Why did we even go there today? It's my 5 year old's favorite breakfast place. I have no idea why but after this experience this morning, I told her to give the place a good once over because we are never going back there again.

Klutz Books:
We purchased the "How to Make Monstrous, Huge, Unbelievably Big Bubbles" and "Room Lanterns" Books. Figured at $19.95 each, a good affordable way to have a couple of afternoon activities with the kids.

The bubbles: We followed the "recipe" exactly and the bubbles were huge but they never dettached from the fancy bubble wand and would pop when you tried to detach them. We tried using regular bubble wands and those did the same thing. We even made wands from wire hangers and blew through paper towel tubes (as they suggested) but those suckers would not detach and blow away! Then there's a section in there regarding the "perfect" bubble weather. A ha! I guess that is their disclaimer when things don't work out. Our recommendation: don't buy this, it's a waste of money!

The only complaint we have about the Room Lanterns book is the difficulty we had opening the plastic clam shell that held the wired lights. As a matter of fact, both plastic clamshells on both books were difficult to open and required the use of very sharp scissors and then you end up getting a plastic cut from that as you try to maneuver those open! If these are really 100% Klutz certified - as they claim on every front cover of their books, then they need to make sure that includes opening up their products!

In summary and to borrow a few lines from a credit card commercial:

Breakfast with your kids at the horrible Le Boulanger: $18
Buying 2 overpriced so-so Klutz books: $50
Spending 4 hours with your kids dining out, attempting to make bubbles, trying to make paper lanterns: Priceless