Our Day at Chuck E Cheese (a review)

This past week a new Chuck E Cheese opened in Oklahoma City.  One of my very good friends has been so excited about this new opening and we had talked about how much fun it would be to take our boys on a special outing when opening day did finally roll around.  To my great delight, Chuck E Cheese contacted me about visiting the new location and writing about our experience.  Well, of course!  I texted my friend and we agreed to take our boys ASAP!

I've seen plenty of commercials for Chuck E Cheese on Disney Junior and PBS and had always noticed the term "safe place to play" was a part of their slogan.  I never knew why they claimed to be so safe until we got there.  Upon entering you and your children are stamped on the wrist with a clear number (visible under a black light).  My friend and the staff member at the door explained that the child and their guardian are stamped with the same, unique number and a child cannot leave unless their number matches the one on the adult who is leaving with them.  There's also only one door you can come in or leave through so this system made me feel very secure and safe as my children ran around.

I immediately noticed this Chuck E Cheese was very open visually.  Our other Oklahoma City Chuck E Cheese is where I spent time in the past (but hadn't been there in maybe 8 years) and I remember there being tall walls separating various areas (where you eat, where you play, etc).  In this new Chuck E Cheese there were no tall walls separating anything.  You could see from the front of the facility all the way to the back where the stage was.  The only visual obstructions were the occasional tall game machine.  This good line of sight also helped me feel more safe and secure as I spent time in the building because even if one of my kids ran off, it was easy to spot them after minimal searching.

My friend and I used a coupon from the Sunday paper (it seems I get new ones in my paper at least once a month) to split a large pepperoni pizza, 3 soft drinks, and 40 game tokens.  If you don't have a coupon, I noticed CEC has many value menu options that are similarly priced but come with a few less tokens.  The only thing I had noticed so far that wasn't in this Chuck E Cheese I had expected to see was a playground.  The only semblance of a playground was a small area in the toddler game section with a slide.  Although playgrounds can carry germs and you can't always find your kid in them, I was disappointed this location did not have a playground because it's a good way to stretch your time at this type of place with your kids without spending more money.  My plan had been play games, eat pizza, play in the playground.  As a result of the lack of playground our day became play games, eat pizza, buy more tokens and play more games.  This is fine and fun, but knowing I'll be spending more money when I come to Chuck E Cheese to stretch our time out means I won't be able to come here as often as I would if they had a playground to alleviate some of the cost of tokens.

Our overall experience was good.  We had a few of the standard problems one might experience at any Chuck E Cheese or similar place… one machine didn't give us tickets, but Chuck E Cheese was on it and made sure when we reported the machine we got what was owed to us.  We also noticed despite being the second group in we still hadn't received our pizza after many other families had.  Turns out they had lost our pizza ticket and therefore our order.  We were there on opening day so of course they were working out the kinks in their system.  We actually ended up going back on Friday of the same week and had no trouble at all getting our pizza so I'm sure this was a one time thing and everyone was very gracious and apologetic.

The Chuck E Cheese was very clean and although I didn't buy the salad bar it looked delicious and had a lot of really great options for protein sources and had green crispy romaine lettuce leaves and spinach as well.  As a person who eats a lot of salad, I appreciated how yummy and fresh that salad looked.

Our boys had a lot of fun both days we went to Chuck E Cheese.  My friend's oldest son is 5 and he was great at winning tickets and playing most of the games.  The oldest son is almost 4 and by our second trip he seemed to be having a handle on more of the games and getting more tickets.  The boys who were 2-- especially my boy who was the youngest in the crew -- had a ton of fun playing games and didn't really know they weren't excelling as well as their brothers.  My son didn't mind just getting one ticket as long as he got his one ticket.  And I appreciate that everyone who plays gets a ticket even if they didn't do anything in the game right.  Some of the group's favorite games were a Batman racing game, a soccer game, a monster game (which you can win a lot of tickets playing) and the carousel in the toddler area.

My friend's kids won about 200 tickets each time we came and my kids won about 70 each time.  All the kids were content and happy with the prices they were able to pick with this amount of winnings and my kids despite having so few tickets still walked away with two things each each time we went.

All in all our Chuck E Cheese experience was great!  My kids are big fans now and ask when they can go back with their friends.  I'm thankful for Chuck E Cheese's attentiveness to safety and open visual sight lines.  I'm thankful for how interactive the mouse himself is (dancing with the kids and handing out free tickets).  I was thankful for the staff and how kind they were and not just flippant and disconnecting from the kids and the parents.  Any concerns we had they listened to and helped us resolve (not receiving tickets and the pizza issue).  I look forward to going back to Chuck E Cheese and know it's something I'll try to do at least once a month with my kids.  If you're in Oklahoma City, you should definitely check out the new Quail Springs location!

*This post is a sponsored post and I was reimbursed for writing it.  All opinions and experiences are my own.

You Don't Have to Live Like This

When Josh and I were engaged we drove to Dallas to hear Rob Bell speak on his "The God's Aren't Angry" tour.  It was so, so, so good and moving.  A BASIC synopsis of the message is that in all of history there have been gods among all the people and all these gods require sacrifice but when Jesus came, He flipped the switch and was the first god who didn't want to take; He was a God who wanted to give.  To the extent, obviously, He gave Himself and became the sacrifice so that we could receive salvation.

At the end of the message, Rob says he was talking with a friend about all that was happening in the friend's life.  His to do list.  Expectations put on him.  His own personal standard.  The general crushing weight of being human and living life and feeling like we could always be doing better.  And Rob just reminds his friend over and over, "You don't have to live like this.  You don't have to live like this.  You don't have to live like this…"

And we don't have to live like this, you know?  Because we're free.  We're set free.  We were in bondage to sin and now we are made free in Him.

I posted this picture to my Instagram this morning and as soon as I saw it that phrase just came into my head and has been living there all day, "You don't have to live like this.  You don't have to live like this.  You don't have to live like this…"  The thing about my journey is that I was in bondage and a slave to food.  You know that if you've read awhile or maybe now you're hearing it for the first time, but it's the truth.  Although life was very good for the many years I spent as a morbidly obese woman (loving husband, healthy and beautiful kids…), I was not my best and I was addicted to food and using it cope with feelings I couldn't face in a healthy normal way.  Food was my drug.  Food was my salvation.  Food was my destruction.

And now it's been 11 months of being the same weight.  11 months of maintenance and only going up a few pounds and then seeing myself go back down those same few pounds.  Never climbing back up and up and up into the 200s and that's good.  But BETTER is that it's been over a year since I sat in my bedroom sobbing and crying and broken because I was trying to cope with an emotion without food and couldn't.  Those early scenes of learning to be mentally healthy in my relationship with food remind me of a film strip where an addict is trying to get clean.  Cranky. Irritable.  Irrational.  Exhausted.  Sweating.  Hopeless.  Sobbing.

…You don't have to live like this.  You don't have to live like this.  You don't have to live like this…

Everyone's struggle is different.  Everyone has a different vice.  For me, it was food.  For you it could be food.  Or something else.  Anything.  But the truth is there is freedom in breaking the chains of addiction.  We weren't made to be these half shells of ourselves roaming the world broken and wishing we could be better, unable to be better.  We were made for thriving and freedom and glory.  Am I perfect now?  No.  Do I still fail?  Occasionally.  But I know now that I am worth more than my feelings.  I am worth more than who I become when I lose control.  I wanted to get better because I didn't want to live like that.  I wanted to get better because I craved freedom (more than I craved food). I wanted to get better because I didn't want to raise my kids in a home where a parent faced addiction and an inability to properly cope.  I wanted to get better because I wanted a marriage where I KNEW I was attractive to my husband and didn't doubt it.  I wanted to get better because I wanted to feel confident being around other women.  I wanted to get better because I wanted to wear clothes that were cute.  I wanted to get better because my body is a temple.  I wanted to get better because the Voice inside me whispered softly day after day, year after year, "You don't have to live like this. I've set you free."

You can be better.   You don't have to live like this.  You are set free.