Yesterday was my Mom's birthday and I'm stuck with my foot all bandaged up and in pain. The night before Jon and I were watching TV and saw a commercial for KFC's hot wings and we both went oh man! I called up my Mom and told her she needed to come over on her birthday and fry us some chicken.
I realize that's not the nicest thing, wanting my Mom to come over and fix me food on her birthday but it actually worked out really great. Turns out that no one had anything planned for her birthday. So after I made a bunch of phone calls to confirm this, we made plans so everyone would come over to our house for dinner.
Mom still fried the chicken (gluten free of course) and brought a green salad, but we provided the sweet corn and Jon made yummy gluten free brownies for dessert. While Jon was out earlier he picked up some Baskin Robbins icecream to go with the brownies.
The real miracle here is that my family doesn't generally come over to our house for dinner. Usually every time we invite them they've always got plans already. Whenever they do come over they generally don't stay very long either. Dinner with my family usually means that it's at their house and usually everyone dishes up their food and goes their separate ways. The guys generally end up watching TV in the other room while they eat their dinner and the girls are in the kitchen/family room often watching TV as well. It's usually dueling TVs around there, which room can be the loudest so that when you do leave to go home you're guaranteed to have a headache.
Last night the whole family was eating around our kitchen table. Even little Piglet was laying back in the high chair (though he kept having to be propped back up cause he kept sliding down) watching us all while we ate. I can't actually remember the last time we were all gathered around the table eating dinner together like that. I'm pretty sure it was one of those other fluke nights probably a year or more ago.
Yes, there are some nights I don't want to go sit at the kitchen table and eat. I'd much rather be comfortable, kicked back in my recliner, watching some TV and browsing the net while I eat but now that I have kids I find I enjoy dinner at the table more. Well as long as we're not trying to fight to get Keegan to eat, which unfortunately takes place most nights.
I don't know, maybe I'm just getting extra mushy and sentimental as I'm getting older but there just seemed to be something special about last night. My Mom still had to cook, and of course did not listen and ended up cleaning up most of dinner as well, but I'd like to think that I gave her one of the best birthday presents of all. Her family (minus my little brother who lives in Connecticut) all gathered around one table for dinner to celebrate her birthday.
If I do sound too mushy, remember, I am still currently under the influence of pain killers haha.
I actually do wonder how many families still have meals around their kitchen tables? We do usually here at home and when we have dinner with my husband's parents we do. Whenever we go out to my grandparents everyone always eats around the same table too but does that happen for everyone anymore? When I was much younger we always all ate dinner at the table together but that was before we had a TV. Once TV entered the house we turned into those couch potato people that couldn't take the time away from the TV to eat their food together and have a simple conversation. If you wanted to talk you had to time the conversation around commercials.
Pretty sad because I remember actually being irritated when my husband and I first started dating. Anytime we had dinner with his parents we all had to gather around the table and I found it extremely irritating. Now I'm thankful for it. Time with your family and loved ones should be cherished. We should be able to take the time, whether just a quick 30 minutes or an hour a day and spend the time together even just to find out how everyone's day went.
No comments:
Post a Comment