Family Dinner

Tonight was our first official family dinnner. Our "camping crew" decided (upon my suggestion) that a monthly family dinner would be a great idea to get all of us together, husbands, kids and all. Especially now that our big kids are all at different schools, it would be nice for the six of them to run around together once in awhile. Since it was my suggestion, our house was the first venue.

This morning was fairly leisurely. Schmoo and I went out to church in the morning and picked up the last minute groceries for the dinner party. Thankfully I gave her lots of advance notice this week, so there was no mammoth meltdown to get her out the door for church this week. After a mammoth cleaning session this afternoon, comprised almost primarily of vacuuming dog hair and washing up old spills under the kitchen table, everyone started to arrive. Papa was out all afternoon playing soccer in the glorious fall sunshing, returning home in time to meet and greet our guests. The kids had some quiet time, but no sleeping and spent the last hour before everyone arrived bouncing off the walls and asking me every five minutes when they would arrive. With a beautiful day, we were able to have the kids running around outside until dinner time. My "mushroom crescents" were well received as an appetizer, along with the cheese, summer sausage and crackers.

Our first learning experience - feed the kids first. We set up two kids' tables, one for the boys and one for the girls, foolishly thinking we would be able to have a somewhat decent adult conversation. Of course, we ended up having to mitigate the eating race that started up before all the kids were finished and resumed their running around together.

Learning experience number two - a bit of Treehouse TV works wonders for pacifying a crowd of five and unders. With the TV on and bellies full, we were able to make it through our own dinner and almost through dessert before the kids came calling again. We wrapped things up at 7pm to ensure everyone had a reasonably early night in advance of another busy school week.