Slowing Down at Dinner

I love sitting down and eating dinner with my sweet family.  I have memories of my family eating at the table together in deep conversation about anything and everything.  One downfall of Shawn and I being in the teaching profession, is that you have to scarf your food down, go to the bathroom, etc, all in thirty-minutes, before it's time for the next class.  So, we are in a habit of eating super fast.  At the dinner table, we do just that, and before our kids are even done with their food, we're long done with ours...seven minutes flat!  So, Shawn and I talked about how we could slow things down a bit so we can have some meaningful and memorable conversations with our children.  So, here's what I did. I cut up some questions, put em' in a bowl, and each night someone draws a question for all to answer.  We've enjoyed being intentional and slowing life down a bit. And, we can still eat fast, but it causes us to stay put and not be in a rush to put our dishes up and get to cleaning.  Here's an example of a conversation that happened:

Tonight at dinner, Faith drew the question, If you could change one thing about your appearance, what would it be? Shawn shared and then Faith shared that she'd want bigger toe nails for more nail polish to go on, Jaxon shared that he wanted skin made of gold, I said I wouldn't change anything, because I was happy with how God made me. Faith replied, "Uh, I can think of some things that could be changed, mom!" Clearly honesty is not a problem for our little girl.  

Faith is the sweetest girl you'd ever meet, and I know her comment didn't come from an ugly heart, but it was pretty funny and caught me by surprise, too.

We're looking forward to more conversations around the dinner table in our future...