Dinner

Can I post something on here and still maintain the respect of my readers?
(if I had it in the first place that is).

You may all be surprised to read this but my family and I, well we are not perfect. My house isn't always immaculate. Rules aren't always followed to the letter. Our yard looks like downright crap much of the time. This is a blog post I am writing partly in protest to the perfect little world I feel closes in on me sometimes. I read a great article and I wish I could sight references and give the person credit here, but it was quite some time ago. The article was about how the art of the family picture has changed drastically in the last few years. Photoshop is ruining the bad picture we all laugh at in those old albums (you that are privy to a certain family pic of mine may insert laughs here). Basically it was lamenting that red eyes are a thing of the past, and we can blur out imperfections in the background, etc. We can even see the pic right away, delete it so it is gone forever and retake a million times when before, you just took two and hoped for the best. I am really going to mess this up because there was something else I read and I don't remember if it was the same article or a different one, but this time it was talking about the perfect cookie cutter blog worlds we read about. Everyone has a blog- correct? Well, it is easy to show our best pics there and we can pick and choose to share only the wonderful, cookie cutter, Norman Rockwell moments in our lives (I would like to insert here that this is also happening on facebook. In fact, I have a few "friends" that every time they post a status update I want to pull my hair out by the roots from the sickening crap I read. Example: "Just got back from skiing with my family, went home, had hot chocolate, sang carols and now I am sitting in front of the fire with my hottie husband and we are sighing about what a beautiful life we lead." Parts left out: "kids fought all the way to the resort, I was mad and didn't speak to my husband for half the day because I detected a flirty voice when he said hi to the ski instructor, the fourteen year old went upstairs after the carols and smoked weed and we will be paying for the season passes we bought on the credit card for 8 years- but we had to buy them cause everyone else in the neighborhood has them and the ones that don't are going to be oh so jealous." (Ok, I probably sound a wee bit more cynical then I really feel, but that was a lot of fun.) Anyway, back to my point- in this world we are finding ourselves in, we can give and get the wrong impressions about everyone else's lives and start feeling bad that we actually have real problems and aren't perfect.

So that was a giant intro into what I was going to confess, which may or may not seem trite now, but whatever. This is all I was going to say: My family has gotten into a bad habit for the past while which is simply this: We have eaten about 97% of our dinners in the living room in front of the TV. It has bothered me for a while now, but I have done nothing about it. One time a few weeks ago we were eating dinner and Scout asked to watch "Cash Cab" which is usually our dinner program of choice. Scout actually asking for Cash Cab got me thinking and I thought, "huh. Is this what I want Scout's memory of family dinner to be?". I brought it up to Rob and he thought about it for some days and came back to me in total agreement that we need to change this. (We have had this conversation a few times, but never quite acted on it, just kept doing what we were doing.)

Well, I am happy to report that we have had dinner at our dinner table every single night this week and we are loving it. I no longer shush my child while she talks through the answer to a trivia question- we have our own silly conversations instead. I now have a table to put my plate instead of my lap or the coffee table. When Elle spills a bit of dinner it is not on carpet anymore (or rather the towel I would put around her place to catch any errant food- and if you've ever seen her eat- there is plenty). Just writing this I am thinking to myself- why the bip did we put this off? Cash Cab certainly isn't worth it.

So anyway, I am not ready to air all our dirty laundry, but this improvement we have made is working out so great, there are plenty more things my little family can work on-- but one thing at a time.