Make Your Home a Haven From the World: Day 4

(Tonight's family dinner.  P.S. - We do own chairs, haha!  Most of them were being used to make a fort in the living room, so some of our children chose to stand at the dinner table.)

Stability in family life leads to a strong home.  In this day and age, life is super busy.  For everyone.  But eating together as a family, is really important to me.  It's vital daily family bonding time.  So I fight for it.  I fight for time to be set aside every evening for us to eat all together.  When we eat dinner together as a family, it gives us a chance to be together, to talk about the good and the bad things that happen in our day, and to fill our bodies with good food.

There have been stages in my family's life, that because of my husband's job or other obligations, we've had to do family dinner as early as 4pm or as late as 7pm.  My children have been involved in extra curricular activities that have taken some of us away from gathering together at the dinner table every evening as I would like.  The "world" seems to think that children should be involved in more extra curricular activities than there ever even seems to be time for.  I think a couple here and there are ok, but we've had to step back and look at what's most important in our lives.  What will serve our family long term for the best?  In the end, we've decided to cut back on some things.  

My children have sacrificed some extra curricular activities in order to be home for dinner more often during the week.  These are good activities and I'm happy that my children have the opportunity to develop their talents, but not at the risk of never being together as a family.  Even if being together is only for 15 or 20 minutes at the dinner table, I think it's worth it.  I know as my children get older, we may not always be this fortunate to be together every night for dinner.  But while they're young, we try to make it work the best we can.

I think establishing reliable opportunities to be together as a family make the home feel like a haven.  It brings a feeling of security and reliability.  It's nice to have family traditions like family dinners together every night to rely on.  I hope in the end, family dinners will strengthen our family and therefore strengthen our home.

*This is a 31 days series:  Make Your Home a Haven From the World .  I will be writing on this topic every day for the month of October.  Click on the link on the sidebar to read the previous day(s).