Dinner Time Anchor

Awhile back I read a question on an instagram account that I follow. It went something like this:

What are the anchors that keep your family connected?

While we have traditions for various times of the year like birthdays and Christmas I was only able to come up with one answer to this anchor question.

It was this: in general, our family eats dinner together every night. Of course, there are times that one child has an internet class that's scheduled in the evening (that's due to us living overseas). There are also nights that 2 or more of my girls have sports practices. Because we often eat dinner rather late, we are still able to all gather for dinner most nights.

The meals are not always delicious, the attitudes are not always pleasant and the conversation is sometimes weird or even gross. (My family thinks its kinda crazy the sorts of things that I don't think should be discussed at the dinner table.) But the point is that we gather. We eat, we talk and some nights we laugh ALOT. It helps that my husband is easy going and just plain funny on the daily.

Last night was one of the nights that was more light hearted and funny. We laughed about several different things, but below is the one thing that I remember. (The other thing i remember I'm pretty sure would offend one of my kids if I wrote it. So, I'll just not type that out for others to read.)

This week my older girls have been playing in a basketball tournament.
Isabel mentioned that one of the coaches from another school had a tattoo and she asked, "Has he always had it and I just recently noticed?"
Someone (maybe Ellie or Lucy) asked, "Where was the tattoo?"
Isabel says, "On the back of his calf."
Shane pipes up at the same time that Isabel is responding and says, "On his LIP!"
Anna remarks, "What if someone had a tattoo of a lip on their lip?"
And that last line made us all laugh so hard for so long.

*Note to those not living in the same part of the world as we are....tattoos are not common here.

Below is a conversation I found typed up in my notes on my phone and I'm pretty sure it was something discussed at the dinner table:

Isabel was saying that she needs to write a paper on a person that inspires her. She was saying that she couldn't think of anyone. Then Aubrey replied, "Most of the people that inspire me are dead or just have really good fashion."

Maybe you had to be there for that one? It was hilarious. Sometimes it's all in the delivery and Aubrey definitely has dry humor. (At times she pretty great with puns, too...even in other languages.)

As I continued to search for funny meal time quotes I found from 5 years ago:

Ellie (5 years old), just referred to a Sloppy Joe (sandwich) as a "Slimy Joe".

Also from 5 years ago:
Lucy (7 years old) told me and some of the other girls at breakfast, "I think the only reason I wouldn't want a tattoo is because it might look weird when I'm old."

I wish that I also had a quote from my son Christian, because he makes us laugh so much. Apparently I didn't write any of those down? But, when I searched "funny" on my notes often what I found were comments about how Christian is funny and makes us laugh. Those notes were from another dinner time anchor which is: when someone has a birthday we have a tradition to each say what we like about the birthday person at over a meal of the birthday person's choosing. I appreciate this tradition and as we have done this for several years I can see how consistent, amazing and wonderful each member of our family has always been and continues to be.