Memory Lane

Today is National Family Day, a day encouraging families to eat dinner together. From their site:

Family Day – A Day to Eat Dinner with Your ChildrenTM is a national movement to inform parents that the parental engagement fostered during frequent family dinners is an effective tool to help keep America’s kids substance free. Family Day reminds parents that Dinner Makes A Difference!

Celebrate Family Day on Monday, September 22, 2008!

I would add that it’s a great time to reflect on our days, share family news, re-connect with Trip after he has been working and commuting for most of the day. We eat rather late in our house. Trip doesn’t get home until around 7:20 in general, and doesn’t want to eat until he gets a minute to unwind in his office upstairs. As much as I love to bake, I really don’t enjoy thinking up, shopping for, preparing and cleaning up dinner every night. I think of the drudgery aspects of it. But when I plan, shop carefully, have all the ingredients, and start early with making dinner, everything goes so much smoother, and I enjoy it much more. Then dinner is a happier event, and then it’s easy to get up with Trip and quickly clean up the table, instead of just wanting to run the heck out of there as soon as possible. Lately, we’ve been writing the dinner plan on the calendar – the added bonus is that we know how old the leftovers are! A peaceful dinner where planning makes it sweeter can make or break my day. Keeping the kids drug free is a great goal, but dinner with the family is a priceless time for many more reasons than that. Trip was making fun of me as I took the photo above so I would have a picture memory of a regular dinner at our house. But I’m glad I have it.