Happy Sunday

I love Sundays.

Sundays have a different feel about them, don’t they? At my house Sundays start with a cup of coffee, a couple of hungry kids and a dog who needs attention. 

It’s not really that much different from any other day of the week except on Sundays, we have nothing else to do but take an extra long time to make breakfast and spend with the puppy. I love the kind of morning where no one is in a hurry about anything. I love sipping coffee with my husband and making and eating too many pancakes. I love staying in our pajamas until 2 in the afternoon and then only changing into sweats and sweatshirts so we can go outside and watch the kids ride their bikes. Sweats and pajamas are basically the same thing but the neighbors don’t look at us weird.

I love spending time with my kids and spending time with my husband and watching my husband spend time with my kids.

For years, I have worked on Sundays. Recently, though, my boss has decided to be extra generous and give me most Sundays off. It’s not that she doesn’t need me on Sundays, it’s that she’s realized that 5 hours into an 8 hour shift I start to ‘waddle,’ as she so affectionately calls it, and she’s decided I’d be better off at home.

I didn’t argue with her decision.

We try not to make plans on Sundays. Plans make me feel pressure and Sunday is not supposed to feel like pressure. We do more play it by ear on Sundays and it seems to work out better that way. A couple of Sundays ago we spent the day in the mountains shooting guns. It was a little cold and a little wet. It didn’t matter much, though. We ended up having a great time. And the look on this kid’s face after he shot my gun for the first time? 

Priceless.

Last Sunday we ended up at the family restaurant down the street for dinner. I always enjoy taking my kids to eat at restaurants. We don’t do it very often. I enjoy the opportunity to teach them how to behave in a restaurant. Because I wait on people for a living, and have done so for so many years, I’m always happy when we have a successful trip out to dinner, respectable mess, table manners, tic-tac-toe and all. It’s important to me that my kids learn how to behave in restaurants. I don’t want to be responsible for raising ‘those kids.’ The ones my co-workers and I will play rock-paper-scissors to get out of waiting on. Jeremy and I have received compliments in restaurants on the way our kids behave. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy that feeling.

This Sunday, we’re having dinner at home. We recently bought a dining room table that seats six. We have been eating on the same dining room table Jeremy and I bought in 2001 when we rented our first apartment. It only had four chairs and it was very small. We’ve wanted a new one for a while but it wasn’t until I found out I was pregnant with baby number 3 that it became a priority. It suddenly became very important to have enough chairs for our entire family. I saw an episode of The Middle once where Frankie decides her family is going to start having dinner at the table every night. When they sit down for the first time, the kids are convinced that the TV is broken because they never sit down to eat at the table. When I say never, I mean never. Frankie’s youngest son, Brick (One of the most brilliant characters on television) doesn’t even have a chair. He’s in elementary school. I remember laughing at this episode hysterically. It was also the first thing that came to mind when I found out I was pregnant: That I was going to be Frankie Heck in real life and that I had to make sure my ‘Brick’ had a chair before he/she was born. I have a thing about eating at the table. Whether it comes from the oven or a bucket, my fancy Deep Covered Baker from Pampered Chef or a wrapper from Taco Bell, I like eating at the table. I think it’s important. I think it’s enjoyable. I think it’s when we get our best family conversations in. I think it’s the reason we get compliments on how our children behave in restaurants. We don’t get to do it as often as I’d like so we try to take advantage when we can. When we’re all home on the weekends we double up and have breakfast together, too. Tonight, when we sit down for dinner, I’m going to put all of the food in the middle of the table. It’s probably not necessary but I’ve never had a table big enough to do that before now and I’m excited about teaching lessons in, “Can you please pass the…” 

And when that kind of dinner happens on a Sunday? Well, it’s sort of like a bonus prize, isn’t it?

Until it’s time for dinner, though, we’re spending our Sunday like this. 

I love Sundays.

Happy Sunday, friends.

go. do. be.