For our wedding, we received an adorable waffle maker that made Mickey Mouse head waffles. I love Disney, and I love waffles, so it was a great gift. But sadly, when we moved to Switzerland all electronics devices stayed behind in Utah. We helped out several poor, starting out college couples who scored some great deals on anything in our house with a cord! And since then, we have been without a waffle maker. First, it's not exactly high priority to get a waffle maker when you have to outfit an entire apartment. Then, when we were ready to get one, we had so many kids that we knew we needed a big one. You know the ones I am talking about, two rows of three waffle squares each, so pretty much everyone gets a waffle at the same time. This may seem trivial, but trust me, it is crucial to keeping peace in a house full of hungry children.
We scoured every electronics/home goods store in our country, and even looked in Germany. I mean, they sell huge boxes of corn flakes, why not a huge waffle maker? No luck. So I gave up, sort of. I would still look half-heartedly here and there, but always knew I would never really find anything. Then, on New Year's Eve, as we were at the mall trying to use up our reward points from our credit card before they expired, I had an inspiration.
We were trying to buy new work pants for Chris with the points, but the store that allowed us to use the points only carried women's clothing at this particular branch. Time was running out, the stores were about to close and we were essentially going to be throwing away quite a bit of money. We brainstormed on what we could purchase at the remaining stores that took our points. First, we got a great watch for Nick. We had promised him one for his birthday, and then got swamped with life and totally forgot about it. Found one that exactly fit all his criteria (we called him and asked him exactly what he wanted) after walking around the jewelry store several times, and had them package that up.
By this time, there was seriously like 5 minutes left until closing. So Chris sent me and Alexandra over to the next store to just "get in the door" while he finished up the transaction with the watch. And while I was strolling around the store full of electronic home gadgets, it hit me. Why was I so stuck on getting one huge waffle maker? They obviously don't exist on this side of the Atlantic, and most likely never will. I had these points that were going to expire anyway. Why not just get two waffle makers? I know, I know. How could I not have come up with such a simple solution before? All I can say in my defense is, perhaps there was a storage issue that has since resolved itself, since I love to toss stuff so much. Perhaps I am too much of a cheapskate to pay for two waffle makers when it's my own money. At any rate, it was like a light went off in my head, or maybe that was just the woman flipping the lights to let me know she wanted to close the shop and start partying.
I grabbed both boxes, and was just walking up to the counter when Chris came in with the watch. We "paid", left, and ate waffles that very night for dinner.
They were delicious.
And we ate them twice more in a two week period. Excellent outcome.
