"A Comedy of Errors" (or dinner time at our house)

"DINNER!!!"  That's how dinner begins every night at our house.  With me yelling at the top of my lungs like a fish wife.  And why, you ask, do I do this?  Because if I quietly tell everyone that dinner is ready, it takes half the afternoon and then the food would be cold.  It's hard to eat a hot meal as it is.  Even with the screaming of dinner it takes 10 minutes or more to everyone to finish their naps, or whatever interesting thing they were watching on youtube or playing with their toys and get to the table.  I really try to have dinner done at roughly the same time every night...it doesn't always work out, but I try.  And usually there are a few people sniffing around wondering when dinner will be ready and picking in the food cooking on the stove...so they why is it that when that fateful word is bellowed, everyone has found something else to occupy them and they can't make it to the table in a reasonable amount of time?

And then it's prayer time.  It takes another 10 minutes to get everyone quiet for the prayer.  Take tonight for instance it was a regular "Comedy of Errors." The Princess set the table and then went to play with her toys and she can virtually get lost in her imagination.  So when most everyone else was at the table she wasn't.  "Jack-Jack" not wanting to start without her, got down from the table and went to her and quietly said "Pwincess" (only he used her real name) dinner time.  Come to dinner." It really was adorable.  Finally, after I counted, she came to the table and climbed over a whole row of us to the end of the bench and then Jack-Jack wanted to climb back to sit by her but that's no good because then I can't keep an eye on him so I tried to get Princess and Peter Pan to switch places. This meant Peter Pan scooting to the end of the bench and Princess moving over to sit next to Jack-Jack who was then next to me. I don't know what was so complicated about this...maybe I was speaking Greek and they had to translate because they fidgeted and fussed before they could finally figure out how to do it. Then they had to switch dishes because Heaven forbid they use the dishes that were set at the place they switched to...no they had to have the dishes that were at their original place.  (By the way...we have matching dishes and no food had been put on them so I don't know what the deal was)  Then in the move Jack Jack's foot got squished and he started crying and yelling and got on my lap and I tried to get him quiet for the prayer.  Next, Princess kept talking to Peter Pan and all of the older kids were trying to get them to be quiet causing even more noise.  So I reached over to flick Princess to get her attention and must have caught her ear instead and she started crying.  Then Jack-Jack got down and ran in the other room trying to turn on "Blue's Clues".  I think "Roger" just said the prayer hoping that most everyone including Heavenly Father could hear it about all of the raucous.

I really hope that somewhere, amid the chaos, our dinner-time prayers get a little farther than the ceiling.  I do know that we've had some great informal and even formal teaching moments at the dinner table.  Conversations that may not have been had any other time have happened around the table.  There has also been a lot of laughter and sometimes even some tears as we spend a little time each night just being with the family.