Cereal Night

Cereal, anyone?

"This is the best dinner EVER!"

My husband is in Houston on business.
My daughter is spending the night over at a friend's house.
When the two left at home with me lamented their fate at having nothing fun to do, I suggested having cereal with banana night, and when I cheerfully agreed to let them throw in two teaspoons full of sugar (like only Daddy is allowed to do) they were ecstatic. Even called their Dad with the news, and licked the bowl clean of sweet syrupy residue.
I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

I think of various friends and acquaintances who travel extensively with their kids any chance they can.

One family took their kids to Hawaii.
Another to New York to see Broadway plays.
Others went to the beach in NC.
We stayed here and had cereal night!

We did read a series of books together and watched the movie. This opened up some good conversations, and my daughter and I continue to think about the characters and the choices they had to make.
We took horseback riding lessons and learned how to groom and tack horses and hung out in the barn with the farm animals on the day when we were rained out.
We had sleepovers and playdates and shopped for clothes that fit.
We spent a day at the lake and caught some fish and learned to watch out for snakes under docks.
We played with kids we had never played with before.
We had icees in Walgreens while we waited for our oldest daughter's passport picture to be processed for our future adoption trip.
We had Easter devotions and prepared our hearts for Sunday.
One kid is even lucky enough to go to Carowinds with the fun friends tomorrow.
But the thing that they just had to call Dad about was...cereal night!

Sometimes I wish that we were the family that likes to bring all our kids everywhere all the time. But our experience has been that if we paid the money to fly to Hawaii, the kids would want to spent most of the time in the pool at the hotel, and we can do that here without the tickets.

My neighbors took their family on a cruise to Europe last summer. When their youngest daughter who was ten at the time came over to play with our oldest daughter, I asked her what she learned from such an amazing opportunity. She thought carefully over the deluxe vacation and said, "Well, I learned that the pizza in Italy is better than the pizza in Spain." That cinched it for me. We can wait.

They say they're not having any fun, but I don't believe them!