Dinner with the Parkers

We all got a chance to sit down together tonight. Jared got caught up in rain traffic (the city would shudder and die if snow ever fell on the roads here) and was late, missing the earliest discussions.
I did my usual dance of the worker bee, placing dishes of food down then returning to push them to the heavily overloaded side of the table opposite Lindsey's reaching arms. As the kids chattered, I heard Lindsey call her entree a "fishy," prompting a discussion over whether that was appropriate. Finally, Dallin set down the proper protocol of addressing our dinner.
“We can call it a fishy when it’s in the water, but when it’s for dinner, we should just call it fish.”
But by then Lindsey, half done with her fishy, wasn’t aware they were still talking about it.
I talked her into putting down her fork to fold her arms and Afton began a prayer which ended up as a description of Grandma and Grandpa’s motor home.
“And it has TVs.”
“And a kitchen. . .”
Dallin began objecting to the prayer too before I interrupted, desperate to preserve Afton’s recent willingness to pray on her own, and let him know that we can pray about anything we’d like to.
Once Jared arrived, the kids ran around in a burst of “Daddy’s home” energy, then everyone was wrangled back to the table, and we continued our meal with the usual game of “guess what I’m thinking of.”
The game has become quite predictable by now. It can be categorized with Dallin picking a particular Transformer toy or fast moving vehicle, Afton giving a random clue then listening to all of our guesses until one of them sounds neat enough to say “yes” to, and Lindsey just saying no to all of our guesses until we can finally get a nod out of her, and we all burst into cheers.
Tonight’s meal was a success. My standards aren't high: there were no major eating battles and everyone ate at least two of the major food groups. The process of cleaning up our plates was assisted by Lindsey’s trip around the table, dimpled 1 yr old hand outstretched, asking everyone for more broccoli from their dish. Afton was anxious to share, showing me as she offered her tiniest trees for the baby giant to gobble.
I wonder how different dinner will be five years from now.
Posted by Sarah