This post has been sponsored monetarily by Tyson Foods in order to bring you more information about their Meals Together giveaway and campaign. All opinions in this post are 100% my own and have not been influenced in any way.
It was a few weeks ago that I strapped my boys into our double jogger, locked up, and headed out the door for a quick run before dinner. As we started out with a walk and as I passed our neighbor’s fence, I could hear the mom calling a warning to her four kids.
“You have 3 minutes and it’s time to eat!”, she said.
I looked down at my phone. 5:27pm. And then before I even made it to another house, I watched as their dad came rolling down the alley and pulled into the garage–like something you’d see in Pleasantville.
Now, I do live in the middle of suburbia, so I shouldn’t be surprised…but do other families really have dinner on the table at 5:30pm? Do other husbands and fathers actually walk through the door this early to find kids sitting at the table and a hot meal served and ready? Because in my world, this type of scene only happens on reruns of Leave It To Beaver.
Although I’m a stay-at-home mom (and you might expect the picture perfect scene) dinner time is total and utter chaos at our house. You see, our lives are the exact opposite of a 50’s sitcom. My husband has been an IT consultant for almost 5 years now which means he often travels up to an hour to get to work, and although he can leave the office between 5-5:30pm, it usually means he’s not home until at least 6:30-7pm. Praying 635 isn’t gridlocked!
We also thought it’d be fun to have 2 boys within 22 months of each other so they’re now at the perfect age where it makes dinner time especially eventful. I hear a lot of crying and screaming because someone hit someone or trying to explain to my three year old that “it’s okay that he’s {the 16 month old} looking at you!” My pant legs are often being pulled on so hard that I’m using one hand to hold my pants up and the other to slide in our dinner to a very hot oven; trying to avoid burning any of the 6 arms randomly waving frantically about.
By the time my husband walks through the door at 6:30…6:45…hopefully not, 7:00…I’m completely exhausted (sometimes in tears) and can’t wait to just throw dinner onto the table. By the time sippy cups are refilled, we’ve microwaved something for the third time (because “it’s not hot enough”), and we’ve all finally been able to cut into our food, it’s A LOT of work to avoid the urge to just in silence and recover, but instead try to be together as a family.
But we do. We purposefully make it happen!
Since my husband only get 1-2 hours with our boys during the week, if we allowed our kids to eat earlier on their own or allowed ourselves to mentally separate at dinner, that would leave us almost no time together as a family. For us, it’s so important that we use every opportunity while we’re home together to be “together.”
In a world where it’s so easy to constantly shoot a text or photo to my husband of our day’s activities, I really try hard to keep what we’ve done during the day for dinner. I’ll use our day to be a conversation starter and easy topics my son can talk about with his dad. We’ll go into details about what he enjoyed at preschool or the butterflies he saw at Willow Bend.
And if the conversation runs dry or your brain is too fried, there are so many great “Conversation Starter” ideas that you can easily turn to and make dinner time more fun and enjoyable. {Here’s a great list from Kids Activities Blog and Six Sisters Stuff!}
Although the process of leading up to dinner is often a beating, I still confess that I love the tradition we’re building. . . that no matter what is going on during our day or the kind of evening we’re having, we come together as a family–around a table–and eat a meal together.
What do meals look like with your family?
* * * * *
Tyson Foods is inviting you to share your Meal Together with a pic!
Snap a Pic at the Dinner Table, and You Could Win!
Tyson Foods is giving away a weekly prize pack (a $50 value) to one lucky family each week between now and May 30, 2014!
All you have to do is submit a photo of your family having a Meal Together and either upload the photo onto Tyson’s Facebook page OR Tweet the photo using the hashtag #MealsTogether!
Although families can’t submit more than 1 photo per day, every photo submission throughout the three weeks will be an entry into the Grand Prize drawing for $1,500!
*Winners will be notified by Tyson on their Facebook page on or around June 2, 2014.
** This post has been sponsored monetarily by Tyson Foods in order to bring you more information about their Meals Together giveaway and campaign. All opinions in this post are 100% my own and have not been influenced in any way.
