McMadison

Fifty-five years ago, on this day in 1955, something monumental happened: the first McDonald's restaurant opened up. Look at those magnificent golden arches! To celebrate this important occasion, Mommy, Madison and Daddy went to the nearest McDonald's we could find, and actually did something we haven't done in a long time: we ate inside.

The drive-thru is just one of those things we always wind up going through, but not on an all-important day like today! We placed our order - we all had chicken, and of course McDonald's french fries. These fries are in my humble opinion, the greatest fries on the planet. Unbeatable. Many try to imitate, but this is the holy grail of fries here. Of course, their burgers are really good too.

We don't go to McDonald's that frequently, but every so often we'll drop through the drive-thru to get a quick meal. Madison knows the drive-thru very well: she knows it as a happy place to put your car, because soon some magical people will stick their heads out and give us all the food we care to eat!

McDonald's is such a big part of our culture, and it is fun to think back on some of our visits. For example, Daddy once visited a McDonald's in Israel, where you couldn't get cheeseburgers because they aren't kosher. Mommy and Daddy stopped at a McDonald's in Kauai while on their honeymoon. There's also the largest McDonald's in Orlando, Florida. Daddy still remembers his grandmother taking us to McDonald's in Pompton Plains, New Jersey - quite some time ago, of course. I just looked it up - it's still there. Oh, here's another one we visited two years ago:

Yes, we found one in Beijing, China, just before meeting Madison. We may sound obsessed with McDonald's or something, but it's just one of those things that's around. It's like - "hey, you want to go get a burger?"

When we first arrived in Beijing, the answer was yes. So we left the safety and comfort of our hotel in China and ventured out to a land where nobody spoke even the vaguest hint of English. Chinese is one of those languages where there's no way you can pick up on anything. They could be sitting there describing what Grimace is for all I know.

That's why we were glad to have pictures on the menus above that we could point at. Fortunately, everything looked normal in those pictures, from hamburgers to chicken wraps to those awesome french fries. Unfortunately, we were warned before going to China not to drink the water - and we had no idea how to communicate to the cashiers there: "No ice."

We wound up picking out the ice later on our own. Which was odd. But not as odd as the bathrooms there:

That's Nana's territory. Do not ask why, but she felt the need to take pictures of all the different toilets from Tokyo to Beijing to Guangzhou. She should open a photo exhibit and call it "Toilets of the World." Seriously, it'd be better and more interesting than some of the other real exhibits I've been forced to look at!

Now before wrapping things up here, it is now only natural to mark the all-important occasion of Madison's first experience with McDonald's. Daddy was quick to be careful to record it. Yes, for an occasion as solemn and important as this, there'd better be a camera nearby. It was sometime in the Fall of 2008, and the photo to your left is Madison's first exposure to McDonald's french fries and a burger. She didn't care for the burger, but fell hard for those french fries - especially after dipping them in ketchup. Yes, there was much rejoicing.

We were so proud of her at that moment. You could say she was McLovin' it.