Thursday, May 1, 2008

The Simple Things in Life

I just returned from having lunch with my daughter at her school. My hubby joined me also, as we had planned a lunch together, but I thought it would be nice to give our youngest child some extra attention. Our family is so busy and hectic, I try my best to give each child their share of attention. Lately we have been running around to track meets and soccer games, both for my son and for my oldest daughter's boyfriend's soccer games. So along the way, my youngest daughter has to go along no matter what.
The entrance to the school always makes me chuckle, the door handle is about at the level of my knees so even for me, I have to sort of bend down to open the door. And ahhhh, the typical sounds of kids in the halls heading to the lunch room. Sure brings back memories.
The lunch room is loud and the students know their set tables. I had to laugh the other night as we were discussing lunch at school and my youngest daughter wanted to eat the mac and cheese from the menu. My oldest daughter was shocked to think that she would pick a school's lunch over mom and dad bringing her some lunch. So it was decided that we would bring in cheese bread; kinda like cheese pizza but with more garlic.
As we sat at the table eating the cheese bread, little by little, our daughter's classmates came with their lunch trays and sat at the table. I was shocked to see that out of four girls that chose the mac and cheese, 3 had nothing else on their trays except for milk. One girl had mini carrots. No fruit, nothing. My hubby pointed out to me that at least there is less waste. I so agree! I remember how shocked I was in years past having lunch at the school with my other two kids how much food was being wasted and thrown away in the trash. But now it almost seems silly that our kids are only eating one thing for lunch. I don't know how they survive the rest of the day!
Sharing one tiny square of the cheese bread with all the girls at the table, they were all so excited to have that little morsel. My hubby has to make the conversation 'educational' and starts asking what new thing they have learned so far today. The common response from everyone, 'Nothing'. But of course we found out from one girl that she learned how many feet were in a mile so yep, you guessed it, my hubby took that and continued to steer it towards more math. I just laughed and asked him if we could have a conversation that didn't deal with thinking since this was their break from learning.
I steered the conversation to my favorite topic, it's not really my hubby's favorite and this is why: I ask the kids to guess how old my hubby is. The responses: '50, 49, 52'....So he turns the tables on me and asks them how old they think I am. The responses: '30 something, 42, 39'. Pretty close huh? My hubby is 41 and I will be 41 in a week. My hubby asks the kids why they think he is older. 'Because you have grey hair'. Poor guy, he's been turning grey since the age of 25.
Lunch does not last very long, so off they go to recess, but first we hug our daughter and she is all smiles. How long will that last without her looking at us as being embarrassing? Will she still want to hug us in public? Until then, we will take all that we can. She is only 9 yrs old, but reality is, our time for the simple things is closing in.

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