This past Saturday night our family had an enjoyable time going to my friend Amy's house for dinner. Amy and Brian are our friends from church, and we both homeschooled. She still does. They have 3 adorable children and you would think that with all we have in common, we would've gotten our families together a long time ago.
Dinner was wonderful. I can't remember what the chicken was called, but it had spinach in it. Yum! But then there was the squash fries. Double yum! More on that later.
After dinner we played a fun game with the kids: Apples to Apples. Their 3 children were playing the game, our 2 oldest were playing, and baby Kaylee stood on my lap flapping her arms for the duration. In my high strung parenting, I sometimes have this notion that my kids are going to be quiet, for some reason, when we play a game. Okay, so I've put in a long day, can you just play without so much screaming? Nope! It was actually a ton of fun to see these 5 kids laughing so loudly and yelling at the top of their vocal range. Even Kaylee (7mo) got into the act by being screamy with the rest of the kids!
Then Jeremy (9) and his friend Evan showed off (loudly) on the piano for one another. It was fun to see their different approaches to the instrument.
With so many kids in the house, the noise level was at a high decibel level quite frequently throughout the evening. Perhaps that was because everyone was having a fun time. Except for when Corey(4) for some unknown reason decided to bop Hannah on the head with the princess wand. (Later on while putting him to bed, he confessed that he felt very sorry for hurting Hannah.)
It was honestly very enjoyable for me to see my kids having so much fun. Why do I try to take away their fun sometimes when we are doing "the family thing" by hushing them up? This evening Carl said, "Well, you know, we worship our quiet around here." Hmmm. He's right. Made me think that peace at any cost is not an effective parenting strategy. Let them be kids. I don't for one minute advocate permissive parenting. Maybe now that I've reached 40 (yikes!) it takes a little more doing to remember what it was like to be a kid, but I need to let my kids enjoy the adventure.
Oh yeah, I didn't forget about the "Squash Fries". Butternut Squash cut into french fry-type slices. Mix with olive oil and salt. Broil in oven until tender. Yum! What a wonderful side dish. So of course I had to buy one. At the grocery store Travis(6) asked me to weigh it. I didn't pick a small one. 5-1/4 pounds. After all 4 kids can put quite a dent in anything I put on the table. (Yes, my kids actually like veggies most of the time.) I had a dickens of a time peeling the thing. And I really hope they like this because a 5-1/4 pound squash may feed us for 3 nights. But it's done and waiting in the fridge for me to cook tomorrow evening. I'll let you know how it turns out! In the meantime, I'm on the lookout for good veggie recipes.
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2 comments:
Sounds like a fun night. I think you should cut yourself a little break though - you were one of two girls, pretty quiet ones at that. Our fun was what - putting on puppet shows, hanging out at grams, reading, (you) playing the piano, and the occasional wrestling match! hardly noisy. We never had boys around and you have 3 of them, smack dab in the middle!
Dianne is right....2 girls who liked to read, went down to Mr. Horn's creek, and would run over to Gram's ....are no match for 2 girls with 3 boys in the middle. Enjoyed reading this and hearing about Kaylee getting into the action as well.
1-4-3 ;)
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