Dinner Without Daddy

Last night Husband had a dinner/meeting/night out with his very best friend. It's an all night out event, they just can't chat 'quickly'. Which means the boys and I get to eat whatever it is we want to eat. It's usually something like tuna noodle casserole, pancakes or hotdogs and macaroni and cheese...simple stuff like that. Ice cream is usually involved as well. Just the way it is around here when Daddy is gone.

Well, tonight at dinner, in the middle of singing “Pharaoh pharaoh”, well, I thought this might make a good blog.

Here is what you need to visualize.

Three boys have taken a bath by now. To my left is S4, wrapped in a towel only in fear we would eat all the food without him. S2 is next to him and he has on his grundies and his red wing hat and hanging on the back of his hat is a raccoon tail, thanks to my parents who brought it back from Mackinaw Island. S3 is next to S2 and he too is in his grundies and he is on his way to bed for annoying his brothers, he just doesn't know it yet. S1 is at the head of the table and he is the only fully dressed son, directly across from the completely naked son. Who, I might add, I did not realize was naked sitting on a bath towel until he was eating and then I figured why bring it up now?

S4 was the first to raise his hand and the shrillest to pray. He prays things like “thank you God for Daddy at work, thank you God for pancakes, thank you God for Jr and for cars” etc. His prayers always crack me up, I usually can figure out who he feels has been mean to him, what he did for the whole day and what he is bothered with from any prayer he prays. Cracks me up every time.

We pass out blueberry (which are VERY blueberry because I accidentally dropped more frozen berries in the batter than I planned) and plain pancakes. We get to drink orange juice tonight and this is a very special treat, all five of us love orange juice.

We chat about pancakes, take bets on how long it'll be before Daddy gets home, hear about all the escapades of the school day when suddenly S4 says....

“Moma, how that song go?”

I knew exactly what he was talking about. In Word of Life class last month we leaned a song called “Pharaoh Pharaoh” sang to the tune of “Louie Louie” RC had given me the words so I got them out and we sang them at the top of our lungs, all of us, and did the motions sitting in our chair. We sang so loud that we couldn't' even hear Johnny and June Carter crooning on the stereo.

I don't really enjoy nights when Husband doesn't make home, but we try to make it 'special' and last night, well, last night I think we nailed it. It was the most fun we have had at dinner in a long time.