But most of all, we laugh. We do a lot of reminiscing and some of our stories we've retold a hundred times! Things that at the time would not have been considered worth remembering but now that they are in our past, we love to remember - things like how the sliding board at the Centre Hall daycare smelled like pee, how Ikey used to call Jordan 'guy', how during an exceptionally wild game of Cranium, I was required to twirl like a ballerina - at the beach - at sunset. And I know we've all heard about a thousand times how Ikey dropped his phone in a puddle of mud at Grange Fair. We remember all sorts of things. We do a lot of dreaming during dinner too. The latest dream is of having a real farm with a real barn and some flat land to actually ride horses without worrying about falling down the hill into the creek. We discuss the pros and cons of getting goats again and how to best make, and is it really possible to have, a goat-proof fence.
And I like this. I think the kids do too. We sit together, fix our plates together, thank God for our meal together, and then eat together. Years and years ago, my mom made a real effort to have the family eat together and I loved it so much that I've done the same thing. I highly suspect that my kids will carry on the tradition. It is so much cheaper than therapy.