bonus points for creativity

It's a crazy world, we all know it.

In the busy hub of our family life, sit down dinners together feel momentous.

I want to celebrate every time we do it; which is why, I think, we have table traditions. Guests at our table are often taken by surprise when we suddenly yell in unison, fingers on noses, and when we break out the question of the night.

These are moments I never want to take for granted, and also the reason why mixing it up a bit at meal time seems important to me.

Last night we tried something new.

I left six letter tiles (think scrabble) at each place setting.

While we enjoyed our meal, the instructions were to turn the tiles into a word, a phrase or an anagram representing POSITIVE things to say about our individual days' experiences.

This attempt to share instantly became a game of word invention mockery--

['gno-lec': "being kissed by a gnome" although it turned into "something akin to full frontal snogging"]

--which I know to be my family's language of love (the mockery part).

['a-tit-i-a': "an enthusiastic salutation"]

I have teenagers, and I'm married to one as well.

I should have seen the writing on, well, the table.

['get-siq': "you're gonna get siq (accent on SIQ)"]

I will say that there was MUCH laughter. 

['heu-dar': "jumping up and down enthusiastically"]

When the game downgraded to bodily functions, (we laughed hardest, I won't deny it) I stood up to commence the clean up process, which, ironically, went quickly and painlessly because of the residual hysteria that ensued.

['log-ho': "what you proclaim in the bathroom 'ere you make a deposit in the porcelain bank"]

These are my people.