At our house we try hard to all sit together at the dinner table every night of the week.  Its not that we are ultra strict about this but the kids eat better, we get to visit with them at the end of the day, and it just feels good to be a family.  Now every night is not supper with Wally and the Beaver but we still try to make it an organized part of our day. 

For Christmas we bought the kids these two tins of games from Family Time Fun called Dinner Games and Beginner Dinner Games.  Each tin contains a number of laminated cards with quick little games everyone can play while you eat dinner, even our 4 year old.  Some of our recent favorites are "Virtual Hide and Seek" where everyone at the table thinks of a place they would hide in the house.  Each family member at the table has to ask a yes or no question to figure out the secret virtual location.  If you guess it wrong you have to take a sip of milk and move to the next person.  James is actually drinking his milk, which is amazing in itself. 

The games are fun and help kids start great conversations with you at the table.  Since we started playing with the Dinner Games the kids get excited about sitting together and enjoying dinner.  It has really made dinner something we look forward to at night as a special time with the family rather than just another task to get completed before bed.  We highly recommend picking this game up for your family dinner time.

Posted by danny at 06:57 AM | Permalink

Well for James' last day of vacation we took it easy during the day because we were really going to cut loose that night at Sayer and Finn's house. 

The night before I picked up a little Cup Cake Kit for Whitney and James.  I explained to them that you never go to a dinner party empty handed and cup cakes would be a nice treat.  We gathered all the supplies and the kids chose the Colorful Cake Bouquet. 

I made the kids do everything from pouring in the ingredients to filling the cups with batter.

The cup cakes were cooked and ready for the next day.  We decided it would be a lot more fun decorating them with our friends than just taking them to the party.

When we got to Finn and Sayers house we first chowed down on Pizza and then got a little play time in.  Isn't it cool the way kids like to eat surrounded by their toys.

Whitney showed everyone her new dance moves form Dance class earlier that day.  She is very excited about school and Friday was even better when she found out she had dance.

After a little play time we busted out the supercilious yet very unappetising cup cakes.  These were more like little sweet muffins than cake.

The kids decorated the cakes with sprinkles, jelly beans and icing.  Apparently the icing was much better than the cake.

Finn had Blue icing.

Whitney went nuts over the green.

James took yellow to town.

Sayer showed red a thing or two about a thing or two.

Shortly after this sugar feast we actually did decorate a few cakes.  I helped Sayer with his masterpiece.

But I left the eating up to him

Whitney showed off her delicate flower just before she engulfed the little nugget of sugar bliss.

After the kids were good and jacked up on sugar they got back to playing.  Whitney enjoyed snuggling with FiFi (actually its Phoebe) but with Whitney's ears ringing from the sugar load I can understand her confusion.

Sayer, James and Finn went off to play with trucks and stuff.  Sayer is one of the coolest kids and is a total Spider-Man fan.

Shortly after this, the boys decided kicking each other around on the furniture was a good idea.  Good thing photographers were around for encouragement.

And if that wasn't enough Farrah decided to just help the little guys out and throw them around a bit.

We had a really good time but it had to end.  James was really tough to deal with when we got home but he managed to work his way into complete slumber. 

So this ends the week vacation with James.  If you would like to see a little slide show we did of the fun Friday night feel free to click the link below. 

Slide Show Link

After putting this entry together I realized that our children are completely spoiled.  What two sets of parents feed their kids unhealthy amounts of sugar and then let them jump on furniture with glass all around them!  Oh well, its all game tokens and the ride goes around only once. 

Posted by danny at 07:48 AM | Permalink