Monday, September 19, 2011

Questions Over Dinner.....What if our house burned?

    My favorite time of the day is dinner.  Hands down.  No contest.  When dinnertime  rolls around, I am able to sit down with my whole gang.  We all sit at the table together.  We laugh. We talk about our day.  We pray.  We listen.  It is usually the only time of the day we have a real conversation with each other.  The rest of the day is full of "hurry up!"s and "let's go"s.


    When we are sitting at the table together, we have a few traditions. 

First, is that we pray.  Sometimes we say the God is Great prayer together.  Sometimes we say The Lord's Prayer.  Occassionally, someone volunteers to say a special prayer.  A special prayer is my favorite.  I love to hear the boys talk to God thanking him for things in their own words. 


 
Another thing we do at the table is that each person shares what their best part of the day was and what their worst part was.  This is often the only time I ever hear anything about the boys school day.  If it weren't for this conversation, I would only hear "School was fine."

The other family thing we do at dinner is the Question Jar.  The question jar is simple.  It's a big ole clear jar.  Inside the jar is strips of paper with questions typed on them.  I found a couple of lists of questions on the internet a couple of years ago.  I printed them off, cut them up, and chunked them in the jar.  The boys each draw one out at dinner and we all take turns answering them.  The boys LOVE the question jar and I love it equally as much. 


There are all types of questions in the jar.  Tonight, the questions were,

"Which one of your friends do you think I like the best?"
"What is a question you will ask God when you get to heaven?"
"Have you ever had a really scary dream?  What was it about?

On the last question, Tucker shared that the scariest dream he ever had was about a fire.  Our house had caught on fire in his dream and everyone didn't get out.  Gulp.  Chills. Sick stomach feeling.  I'm not letting my mind go there.  Tucker has always had terrifying dreams.  Truly horrific ones.  He has had these terrible dreams since he was a toddler.  The dream he shared with us tonight spurred a conversation about what we would do if we had a fire.  We talked about how to get out and general fire stuff that families talk about.  I then gave the boys a scenario.  I asked the boys what they would save if they had time to only save 5 things if our house was burning. (This is where I explained that we wouldn't ever really do this.  Things aren't ever really worth saving)  This was a hypothetical scenario. Don't send me hate mail about fire safety.

When the boys left the table, they searched throughout the house for the five things worth saving.  Here is what they would save...


 Tucker would grab:
 1. His snake ...which I wouldn't let him get out of its cage for the photo.
2. Photo autographed by Bo Jackson
3. Shot gun (really?)
4. Football card autographed by Carnell Williams (Auburn football player)
5.  Football autographed by several Auburn players


This is what Sawyer would rescue:
1. His Beta fish
2. His snake ....which I wouldn't let him get out for the photo either, so he wrote the word "snake" on a piece of paper
3. Football autographed by Auburn players.
4. Gold medal for javelin from Jr. Olympic State Finals
5. Gold medal for 400 meter dash from Jr. Olympic State Finals


Carter would save these things....
1. Auburn pennant
2. Airsoft gun.....which came from the flea market, I might add
3. Autographed Auburn football
4. Indian shirt made in Kindergarten
5. Under Armour hat .....seriously?

Their collections were much less sentimental than I expected, but I guess what is special to a child is not the same as what is special to an adult.  I asked the little boys, "Would you not get your blankies from the treasure chest?" (If you don't know about their security blankets...you can read Sawyer's story and Carter's story here.) They both answered, "Um, no!"  Carter said, "We don't even need those anymore!"  Argh!  Stab in the heart!  What was once the greatest treasure ever, now doesn't even rank high enough to be saved in a fire.

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