The Laughter Won Out

My family arrived safely back home last night. Hurray!

Steve had called me earlier in the afternoon and said they could just go ahead and eat something on the road since they'd be getting home later than our usual dinner time.

However, it occurred to me that we will only have two more family meals together before Nathan leaves for school and I was loathe to give up even one of those meals.

So I said blithely, "Oh no, I'll just cook something and we can eat whenever you get here."

Unfortunately, when I said those words I had forgotten that I hadn't been to the grocery store in over a week and that my stash of ingredients for any sort of meal was dismally low. And so I scrimped and substituted ingredients and put into play some cooking creativity and finally managed to come up with a chicken pot pie. I figured that the pot pie would provide the bread, meat and veggies all in one dish and I could add a fruit salad and we'd be all set.

I usually use some canned and some fresh fruit when I make a fruit salad because buying several kinds of fresh fruit can be a bit expensive. But alas, all I had in the house was a can of peaches and a can of mandarin oranges. Can you see the problem there? TWO fruits of the same color! How unattractive is that?

I am very color conscious when I cook and am always adding paprika or parsley or some sort of little garnish to make food look nice. It just really offended every cooking sensibility I have to put out a fruit salad containing two fruits of the same color. Ick.

See? Don't you feel totally uninspired right now?



"Oh well," I said to myself. "It's the time together as a family that counts, not the color of the fruit." (Hey! I could print up t-shirts with that slogan.)

We had a wonderful reunion when they got home; Snowy was leaping and barking and running in happy doggie circles as soon as he heard the voices in the garage. I could just picture what he was thinking. "Hurray! I'm being delivered from the company of The Boring Woman!"



They started unloading stuff as I finished up dinner preparations. I got the fruit salad out of the fridge, took another sad and mournful glance at its monochromatic state and heaved a silent sigh. I thought, "Oh, if I only had some red grapes, or some bananas for a little bit of variety."

About that time I glanced over at the counter on the other side of the kitchen where Steve had put some bags from the trip. Looking into the first bag I saw a wondrous sight! Steve's mom had sent a few food items along and guess what two of those items were? Red grapes and bananas!

I just about did a Happy Grape and Banana Jig, right there in the kitchen.

Doesn't this look so much more appealing?




After we ate our chicken pot pie and multi-colored fruit salad, we talked and got caught up after our six day separation. And then (hurray!) it was time for dessert. Chocolate dessert!

Nathan was very pleased to see his very own personal portion of mousse and thought that he would add some whipped cream. Look at the intensity of his posture, the seriousness of his demeanor and the manic look in his eyes. This is very important work.



After he had added an impressive tower of whipped cream to his bowl, he got a sudden mischievous glint in his eye and proceeded to do this.





I was immediately torn between the desire to laugh hysterically and the desire to say something motherly like, "Nathan! That is NOT polite dinner time behavior! Put that can down right now!"

Just so you know?

The laughter won out.

I'm going to miss him.

Value Meal

A little while ago, Sarah and I were at a store looking at a rack of t-shirts. One of them showed a line drawing of a family around the dinner table with the words, "Value Meal" written above the picture.

I just loved that t-shirt, not just because it was a clever play on words but because that is how we view dinner time around our house. It's a time when values, knowledge, joy and camaraderie are ingested right along with the chicken casserole. It's also a safe time and by that I mean it's a time when no corrections are allowed.

Unfortunately, it hasn't always been that way.

I remember a meal last year when Nathan was eagerly telling us all a story about something that had happened to him that day. His face was lit up, his voice was animated, and he was really getting into the telling of the tale. Halfway through his story, he said something that wasn't grammatically correct and without even thinking about it, I corrected him.

I'll never forget the sight of the joy leaking out of his face. I'll always remember how his voice faltered just a little. I can still hear the way the rest of his story ended up sounding a whole lot less enthusiastic than the beginning.

Although Steve and I had already made the agreement that we wouldn't discipline the children at the table (for not getting the lawn mowed or the homework finished, for instance) I had never thought that something as simple as correcting grammar could rob dinnertime joy, too.

And so our table has been officially deemed A Safe Place. Although it sometimes takes me holding on to my self control by my fingernails, grammar is no longer corrected at the table. If one of my children wants to insert the word "like" four hundred and twenty-two time into their dinner time narrative, I will not say a word. If Nathan wants to say, "Me and Michael" instead of, "Michael and I," he's free to do it! Even if one of them were to (gasp!) use the word, "ain't" it would be okay.

The bottom line? No joy-smushing in any form is allowed at the dinner table.

When Sarah was going through speech therapy, part of our job at home was to listen to her talk on a casual basis and occasionally point out if she was sliding over "S" sounds or talking too fast and jumbling her words.

Dr. Jones said, "Just be listening as she is talking, maybe at dinner or in the evening before bed and mention any corrections that need to be made in her speech."

At first I thought, "Well, I can do that. No problem."

But then I remembered about The Safe Place. No grammar correction. No posture correction. And no speech correction.

I ended up telling Dr. Jones about our family's dinnertime policy. He seemed quite impressed by the whole concept and was very understanding of the point I was making.

Now this is not to say that dinnertime is a free-for-all where anything goes. Steve and I are not so much into unconditional parental love that our dinners turn into wild sessions of burping, slurping and pea throwing!

However, there is some sense of dinner being a free-for-all in the area of giggles, friendly arguments and frequent dashes for the dictionary.

Last night for example, we spent twenty minutes discussing how driving speed affects gas mileage and how a tail wind or a head wind affects the progress of an airplane.

Then we discussed how important stereophonic hearing is in being able to locate the direction sound is coming from. This led to Steve clapping his hands in different areas around the table while Sarah closed her eyes and turned her head toward the sound of each clap.

That little illustration was followed by a discussion of how monocular vision affects depth perception. We conducted experiments where Nathan closed one eye and tried to reach for something across the table; he was surprised by how much perceptions change when both eyes are used.

Naturally, at one point a call for the dictionary was made, although I don't remember at the moment what the word in question was.

What I DO remember, though, is that grammar went uncorrected, foibles went unmentioned, and laughter was served as the main course.

It was a value meal, indeed.

The Sneezing Angel

You all have been marvelously and wonderfully gracious to post in the guest book and sign up to become official Smithellaneous Followers. As this blog finishes out its first weekend of existence, I want to thank you all for the lovely welcome to Blogger-ville!

NOTE: I'm within ten guest book postings of getting to my goal of 100 postings for the first weekend of the blog. Are there ten of you out there who might be willing to sign in? It would make me ever so happy and I would even send each of the ten signers a thousand dollars. (Or not.)

Steve has spent the past four days performing in a Passion Play at Whitley Church , the church we're attending. (Whitley's pastor, Ferrell Hardison, is a wonderful guy who we've been friends with for over twenty years.) The performances were packed and the church staff estimates the play was seen by around 3200 people in four performances.

At the beginning of the play, Steve had an off stage speaking part as the angel who stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac. At just the right moment, when Abraham was drawing his knife, Steve commanded authoritatively into the microphone, "Abraham! Abraham! Do not harm the child in any way!"

Well, yesterday, Steve had the worst attack of allergies ever and spent the whole day blowing his nose and sneezing like a rhinoceros . (Actually, I'm not sure if rhinoceroses do a lot of sneezing but it's just a greatly intriguing mental picture. I'm intrigued by some very strange things, I realize.)

At any rate, I was not having good feelings about all the sneezing stuff because I just didn't think that a sneezing angel would benefit the drama in any positive way. Can you imagine an angel proclaiming ponderously, "Abraham! Abra-ACHOO?"

Not good.

So Steve went trundling out to the store and got some heavy duty allergy meds which certainly slowed down the sneezing but also made him very laid-back. I guess in the end he turned out to be The Non-Sneezing But Extremely Mellow Angel which is no doubt better than being the Non- Mellow But Extremely Sneezing Angel! (Or whatever.)

In the last scene of the play, he did a great job of playing a cocky, contemptuous judge. I got a few pictures of him in that role and am now going to attempt--for the very first time in my very own personal history of the world--to post them here on Blogger. Wish me luck!

Today after the performance he morphed from cocky judge into the guy who comes home to carve the ham for Easter lunch! (Wait a minute. Do you carve ham or just turkey? Hmmm. I'm not sure.) Let's just say that he cut the ham up into slices. I certainly can't go wrong with that description!

Our family had a lovely Easter meal in the dining room (instead of the kitchen) using our nicer plates and silverware. Before eating, we joined hands to pray and Steve expressed his love for each of us in a very special and dear way. It was such a great blessing, on this beautiful Easter day, to be a part of a family that has created such a joyful circle of love.

And sneezes.