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Sunday, April 19, 2009

Is dinner dying?

My mom taught me well. The dinner hour is important - and for more reasons than the food! For my family (and I'm guessing most others) the dinner hour is the one time of day that we are all together. It neatly falls after school,work, and play activites. And comes right before meetings, movies, more school, and bedtime rituals.

The dinner hour gives us a chance to talk. About our day - we sometimes play a game called 'High/Low' I borrowed from the Bruce Willis/Michelle Pfeiffer movie "The Story of Us." (Don't watch the movie - it's bad-just play the game.) To play high/low, you simply take turns telling the very best thing that happened to you that day, and the worst. Maybe you got a raise, and a speeding ticket. Some days we make a statement and that's it. Other times we never make it around the table because the follow up questions keep the conversation going and going and going!

We talk about plans for the evening and the rest of the week. We plan camping trips, birthday parties, and sleep overs. We talk about shows we saw on TV, movies we want to go watch, and news articles we read at work. We've talked about vacations we want to take, desserts we want to make, and future grandkids we want to have.

As a general rule; nothing is off limits. Yes, some topics get a little gross, and we have to save it for later. But if that's when 'Kenna feels comfortable asking what sex is, then that's when I'm going to answer her.

What's sad, is how many families ignore this opportunity to get to know each other. They sit in front of the TV, eat separately as they drift in and out of the kitchen, or worse, dinner hour is spent eating out and getting to know the wait staff instead of their own family!

Yes, we all have nights that are too crazy to sit long enough to down a corn dog, but those should the exception, not the rule. Yes, we do eat pizza while we watch a movie, but that happens once in a while, not every night.

The every day expectation is that we're all home shortly after 5pm. Everyone helps get the meal on the table, by 6pm we sit own together, thank Heanvenly Father for our blessings, and we visit as we eat. We all clean up afterwards, and with any luck, we can extend our family time a little longer. Maybe through 8pm...maybe through college!

1 comment:

  1. Nice job! It has taken me all these months to figure out how to post a comment. : )

    ReplyDelete