"Let me guess... you want the..."

On Saturday mornings, it was a special treat growing up to go the Colony Kitchen about three miles or so away from our house out in Palmer, Alaska. Sometimes we went for breakfast, sometimes for lunch but whatever I ordered was always the same and the server always knew what I was going to say before I could say it myself.

For breakfast, my favorite was the short stack of pancakes topped with cherry pie filling and decorated with whipped cream and served up with orange juice. Lunch was always the chicken strips with curly fries and an icy cold root beer.

We lived out in "the valley" for years- and the Colony Kitchen was a favorite for all of us. Everyone working there knew us just as we knew them. My Dad would sometimes bring in the morning newspaper and we'd eat, read and chat at our leisure then pile into the car satisfied and full knowing that the weekend had officially begun.

I miss those pancakes and chicken strips- and truth be known, they weren't what you would consider gourmet fare but that wasn't what Colony Kitchen was all about. It was comfort food, and what they were serving up was a little piece of home. Troy has made me my pancakes with cherries and whipped cream several times since we've been married because he knows how much I miss them. Somehow even though he makes the lightest, fluffiest, most wonderful pancakes ever, it's just not the same. I think I miss the tradition and the familiarity of it all; like how the 'Cheers' theme song says "A place where everybody knows your name...and they're always glad you came" {not that Troy doesn't know my name or he's not glad that I came to the dining room table to eat with him :-)...}

Troy and I haven't created any traditional Saturday morning breakfast hotspots yet- I think partly because it's such an effort to get out of the house with Peyton that early in the morning and still make it to breakfast and not brunch or lunch. Also, even though we lived in Prairieville for 1 year, Married Student housing on LSU campus for another year and New Orleans for nearly 4 years it always felt like we were a little transient and were never really home. Plus we've only been in the State of Texas here for two weeks! I hope that once we move into our permanant home, we can foster traditions like my family's Saturday morning outting with Peyton and our newest addition to the family.

So what are your family traditions? Ice cream sundaes on Sunday? Pizza night on Friday? Dinner and a movie the first Saturday of the month? If I like your traditons I might have to steal them and make them mine ;-)