Sit-Down Dinners? What Are Those?

Our family does not do a lot of sit-down dinners. It’s impossible, for these reasons: 

~My husband travels a lot for work. 

~The kids have after-school activities. 

~I hate to cook. 

So maybe, MAYBE on a good week we’ll get two sit-down dinners a week. And I’m not talking extravagant sit-downs. Last week I made canned spaghetti sauce and frozen meatballs, bagged lettuce and a fresh loaf of bread from the grocery store. And before that, another night, I did two pizza crusts and topped one with cheese and sauce and the other one with fresh tomatoes and the good buffalo mozzarella. 

Those are just the kinds of dinners I make. I’m not snazzy.

Ooh, but I like that word. S N A Z Z Y. 

Here’s the thing though. Even though we don’t have a lot of family sit-down dinners, when we do have them, we’ve got our traditions. I ALWAYS have to sit in the same seat, and you moms out there probably do this too. It’s the seat closest to where the kitchen is located, right. So when everyone says, “MOM, can you get me the so-and-so…” you don’t have to dodge four other chairs to get up and get the so-and-so, right?

Another tradition we have at our rare occasion dinners is that my youngest, Luke ALWAYS says our family prayer. He’s been saying it since he could talk, and he’s ten now. It’s so freakin’ cute that he’s gonna be saying it til he’s 18 I’m sure, and I don’t even know if he knows he’s got it wrong, but it’s the God is Great prayer. However, he says it wrong.

He says it the opposite way so it does not rhyme. Like this:

“God is good, God is great, let us thank him for our food.”

Does not rhyme! But we all hold hands around the table and close our eyes. Well, some of us do. I think I keep mine open to watch how cute everyone is. And he says this prayer. And then everyone starts to eat, but then we do our OTHER dinner tradition, which is BEST PART/WORST PART.

We go around the table sharing our best part and worst part of the day. And NO ONE is allowed to say that the moment we are sharing right then and there is the BEST PART because that is the automatic given. Because we are all together as a family, and we all already know that’s the absolute best part of our day. It gives us all a chance to discuss our day and sometimes what’s neat about it is that the best/worst part of our day is the same thing. For instance, last week, my best/worst was I was happy that I was going to be able to go to Starbucks to write (BEST), but then when I got there, I wasn’t having very much luck thinking of what I wanted to write about (WORST). 

So, even though our dinners together are rare, we make sure to make the most of them when we do have a chance for all of us to be together. We make them as memorable as we can. What do you and your family do together to make your dinners special? Sometimes we do AM for PM and they LOVE getting pancakes and bacon for dinner. That’s ALWAYS a fun night. 

This family sometimes does dessert first. I know my kids would freak for that. Ice cream for dinner! (Actually, the other night the whole family was gone and I went to the store and got myself one of those big sugar smiley face cookies and ate that for my dinner! Shhh! They don’t know I did that!) 

If you would like to share your family traditions at the Fresh Takes site, you could be entered to win a $50 gift card through Subway and have the chance to be picked to be a “family of the month” on their website! Feel free to share your stories over there! 

Don’t forget to make your family a priority! They’re the most important people in your life.

I’ll be back later this week with another blast of books for you as well! Thanks for reading. You guys rock!