Gather round the table

Out of a 7 day week we eat all together around the kitchen table at least 5 nights.  Tuesdays are Patrick's guitar lessons so we usually grab Subway and Wednesdays I eat with my family at Celebrate Recovery and the boys plus Daddy have pizza or Chinese.  They call it their Guy Night.
I hear so many people say they never eat together or everybody does their own thing at dinner and to me that is so sad.  Even if you can only commit to eating as a family 2 or 3 nights a week it is worth it.  It is such a perfect time to talk and listen to your kids.
I go around the table and ask each person what was the best part of their day and what was the worst part.  Sometimes the boys are silly with their answers..."The best part of my day was walking through that door and seeing your smiling face!"  Or "The worst part of my day was realizing that we wouldn't have cereal for dinner." 

Yesterday we took advantage of the great afternoon and played outside for a little while.  Once we came in I worked on homework with Josh (20 minutes of Math with no tears!) while Patrick read next to Colin while he played on the Nook.  With 3 boys in the house there is a lot of activity most afternoons. A LOT of activity. At times I will walk into my living room and see a pile of boys wrestling around on the floor much like you see wolf puppies do at times on those nature shows.  To have a peaceful afternoon so I could focus on homework with Josh and Patrick kept an eye on Colin was a treat.

After homework, I pulled out everything to make dinner and Josh came in to ask if he could help.  Truth be told I can make dinner a lot faster without his "help" but it seemed important to him so I let him take over some of the minor things. 
When John walked through the door at 6PM we sat down to our meal.  This is probably my one 1950's housewife trait...I like to have dinner on the table when he gets home from work.  Luckily I only work until 3PM so I'm able to do this...I know if I had to work until 5PM it would be much more difficult.  Josh was all about telling his Daddy how he helped make dinner.

As we were going around the table last night sharing our best and worst parts of the day Josh said, "The very best part of my day was being in the kitchen with you and helping you cook and learning how to make food taste good."  Josh is usually my child that has a long list of the worst parts of his day and last night when asked he said, "You know...I can't think of a single bad thing that happened today."

If you don't already spend some time gathered around a meal with your kids I challenge you to give it a whirl.  I know it's hard to do if you work and the kids have homework and various after school commitments but even setting it as a tradition one night a week is huge.