A New Table!

Dear Family,

Welcome to family and friends that have been following along. It is my goal to try and put new pictures or stories on here once a week, so here goes.

Over the years, the kitchen table and chairs we bought when we had two small ones, have had a lot of abuse and hard use. The chairs have been breaking since we bought them. We have also added family members and enjoy having company over to share a meal, which is harder as the table gets more crowded. We found a larger table in Oregon, but I didn't end up liking the style, so we found a good home for it when we moved to Idaho. For several years we made do with the old table and another smaller one. When we moved to Missouri, there were I think 2 of the original chairs of our table set left, and they were barely hanging on so we junked them and have been sitting on folding chairs since then. (The second table found a new home as well.) Well, we have family coming out the first week of June (and boy are we excited!) so we have been on the look out for a good table and chairs. The hardest part has been finding a set with enough chairs. Finally on Friday I found one on Craig's list that had 8 matching chairs! Yeah! I called and talked to the guy selling it and it sounded like it was in pretty good condition. Daniel had a Father and Son Activity with Caleb and Joseph Friday night, so Saturday morning Daniel pulled the seats out of the van and just the two of us headed off to see what the table and chairs looked like. No children--a real date! The table looked great so we bought it. The man was very surprised that we managed to fit the table and all 8 chairs into the back of our van! (You would be amazed what you can do when you put your mind to it.) We hit a few more garage sales picking up tennis rackets and other things. (One of the most important being gates for the stairs since little Andrew has discovered he can climb the stairs! But that is another story.) We got home just in time for Daniel to unload the table and chairs, put the seats back in, and get ready for work. The old table was still in the kitchen so the new set went in the living room.

Today when we came home from church, the children wanted to eat on the new table.

"On the cream colored carpet? Are you crazy?" I asked.

"We will be very careful!" they promised.

They were so excited about the idea, that I could not say no. So to celebrate the first "Dining" experience on our new table we put together a 'Fancy' meal and played "Restaurant" complete with waiters and waitresses. Since I did not want to do extreme cooking, and everyone was hungry "now!", the menu was Salad and Toppings. Everyone helped. We pulled everything out of the fridge and cupboards that could possibly go on a salad and came up with more than a dozen options, and two salad dressings choices. The children got little notebooks out and wrote down all the options. Hanna put name tags at the table. Joseph put on his new vest, Caleb put on an apron. Makala set the table with tablecloth, place mats, and napkins. We had the girls seated first and the boys took orders asking "Would you like . . . " for each available topping. They made each plates to order and served it. Then the boys sat down and Makala and Hanna played waitress and made Caleb and Joseph's plates up for them. Rebecca was the "little Big Waitress" for the dessert orders--ice cream with choice of fruit toppings. She was very grown up about it (but did not remember the orders ) and had a very big smile. The drinks were whatever you imagined your water to be (no juice on the carpet please!) All in all it was a fun celebration.