Tuesday Dinners

When a stay-at-home mom has been with little kids all day and dad needs to put in some extra time at the office, the panic alarm goes off.  What?!  One extra hour of craziness?!  (Let's be honest, some days even 5 minutes can set off the panic alarm).  I do not know how moms with husbands who travel do it; I count down the minutes until Jason gets home most days!

Thankfully, God gave me mom friends who come to the rescue.  Dinners with moms and kids started in a moms group I was in a few years ago.  The host mom had a late working husband so a group of us started to eat dinner together fairly regularly.  At one dinner I met Bethany. I connected with her immediatly over our current states of depression after our 2nd borns.  We have both survived our postpartum depression, yet still share in the dread of dinners without husbands.

Tuesdays have become the weekly meet up.  Our late afternoons/dinners/early evenings are NOT relaxing one bit, we have 5 kids between us, all 5 and under.  But we are doing motherhood together.  Usually sipping a beer or wine.

Bethany is a fabulous, healthy cook and doesn't mind cooking (win for me!), so she usually prepares it all and I attempt to keep the peace.  (More like I stand in the kitchen watching Bethany work while trying to get in an adult conversation amist constant interruptions)

Once we get all the kids at the table, 9 times out of 10, just the moms, Max, and Maggie eat.  A few recipes have been winners for Evie, but Harris and Braylen are typically 2 and 3- year-olds eating nothing.

Steps 1 and 2- Get all kids at the table with water

Steps 3-42 feed 5 children who need 39 different things

After "dinner", the kids "play" some more.  We never know what to expect when the Fry boys and Hollencamp kids interact.  Tonight Max and Evie teamed up and had a good time together.  Other nights, everyone is fighting over a stupid $1 grabber from Target.  Max is the insitagor, Harris is sneaky, Braylen is aggresive, Evie screams, and Maggie watches the maddness.  It's all quite comical at 6:15 PM after a long day.    The warmer weather means we can take our show outdoors

Cheers to just another day of being a mom.  It really does take a village to survive.