Nothing Boring about Family Dinner

We never used to eat dinner as a family. The kids would eat alone, a messy affair with corn flying through the air and half-eaten chicken nuggets hidden under the rug while I ran in and out of the room, shouting at them to "eat, eat, eat!" It wasn't pretty, definitely not a Norman Rockwell picture, and it filled me with guilt.

Last year, we moved to the Midwest and embraced a slower pace of life with bigger houses and shorter commutes. Family dinner finally became a part of our lives. Now we sit down together to eat most nights. Corn still flies through the air but so does conversation. We kick off each meal by asking each of our three children aged 8, 6, and 3 to share their best, worst and luckiest moment of the day. They're giving us more insight into their worlds, telling us about new friends and mean teachers, and we feel more connected as a family.

To say that our most treasured family tradition is having dinner together every night sounds corny, and possibly boring, but in reality, there's never a dull moment.