Breakfast Picnic for Everyone

This morning, for some reason, I told the kids we could eat breakfast outside. I was making healthy whole-grain blueberry waffle sticks--the recipe only makes enough for about 20 waffle sticks, making 8 at a time (about 3 minutes for each set of waffle sticks). I made the first 8, divided them into to plates with syrup and took Tate's outside; Sammy followed me with hers. As I set Tate's on the table, I told Sammy to close the door so the dog wouldn't get out, but he was standing right behind me. I said his name quickly, but he knew what I wanted, so he ran off the deck and after the cats. I went back inside to get the second batch of waffles out of the machine and heard, "Mom, Kenji's eating my waffle sticks!" Before I got out to the deck, he ate one of Tate's too. I brought him back inside, put some waffles on a plate for Chase along with a few extra to take to Sammy and Tate, leaving one on a plate on the stove (but I pushed it to the back). You guessed it--when I came back after giving Chase his waffles, there was no waffle stick on the plate! Then I heard Chase start to cry--a cat had taken one of his! When I got back into the kitchen to get my own breakfast, Kenji was licking the butter dish. The rest of the breaksfast was uneventful, but I did leave the waffle maker open to cool off, kind of hoping the dog would burn his tongue. And I'm such a sucker--we ate supper outside too. We only had to throw a cat off of our chair every two minutes or so, but the dog was INSIDE :)