The Rule Is To STAY FANCY

Until today, all my four-year-old sons Oliver and Milo had seen of the Pfister was the restroom outside the cafe. I’d had to drop off some materials while I was in the midst of applying to be the next Narrator, and the plan was that I’d just run in quickly while my husband waited in the car with our four kids. Suddenly and not at all surprisingly, Oliver and Milo insisted that they had to use the bathroom. So I piled them out of our van and tried to rush them through the lobby, but they wouldn’t be rushed. The Pfister restroom, they declared, was “like heaven” because it was “so sparkly”. I knew in that moment that if I became the Narrator, I’d have to bring my boys back to the Pfister, show them more than the bathroom, and watch this place, my new home-away-from-home, spark through their wild and wonderful little eyes.

So this afternoon, we put on our “fanciest” clothes and headed to the Pfister to see “all the special things where Mommy writes the words”.

We tried out the narrator desk

and the leather chairs on the lobby stairs: “Wow! Comfy!”

Oliver’s Pfister tip: If you want to test if you can really kick back in a chair, suck your thumb to see if the chair is a natural fit.

Of course the lobby lions were a magnet. Christened by countless children, today they were named “Tawr and Rawr”. (Not the most original names for a writer’s children to call such stately beasts. I was a little tempted to tell you my children deemed them worthy of names like Regulus and Elbert. But the truth was a very prosaic Tawr and Rawr.)

The lobby was very impressive, and we literally gasped at the mural on the ceiling, but what we found next in the cafe was magnificent enough to rival even the bathroom…the cafe’s giant candy jars.

There was literal leaping for joy happening over those candy jars.

After much deliberation and approximately eight changes of mind, desserts were chosen and tucked away in boxes to be eaten all the way up in Blu.

To get there, WE GOT TO RIDE THE ELEVATOR! WE WERE UP AS HIGH AS A ROCKET SHIP WOULD GO! WE COULD SEE THE WHOLE CITY AND ALMOST THE WHOLE WORLD, EVEN THE OCEAN, WHICH IS CALLED THE SOUTH OCEAN, WE ARE PRETTY SURE.

This part of the story is pretty much a blur of scrumptious food– strawberry tart, peanut butter cookie, warmed cinnamon roll, and a bowl of snack mix that miraculously appeared in front of Milo that he assumed was just for him to gobble all by himself.

Sometimes we got a little too excited to remember to use our best manners. But when I reminded Oliver and Milo of this, they quickly admonished each other to “stay fancy!”

As we reluctantly gathered our things to leave the “almost all the way up to outer space” grandeur that is Blu, I asked the boys what their favorite part of the Pfister was.
“Eating treats up so high!”
“And riding the elevator!”
“And just being really fancy!”

Will they still eat their dinner when they get home?

Both simultaneously: “Probably not.”