A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down

So this is my very first blog post in my shiny new blog. It sort of feels like wearing a new outfit for the first time- exciting, and making you feel a little fancy, but really you're just worried you are going to screw it up as soon as you walk out the door. And let's face it... I probably will. But this is my dress, er, blog, and I'll do whatever I want with it.

The real question... why am I here. Well, I'd like to challenge myself to take 15 minutes or so each day to write a little. When I was an English major in college I used to think I'd write for magazines, or write a book, or something lofty like that. Now? 15 minutes a day on a free blog, that's about all the steam I've got.

I want to document the next year-ish with my family, and I'm going to challenge us to eat at home, at the dining room table, for 340 days. I'm sure we will have trips come up, and I travel for work, so some times that will be impossible, but we're going to try. When I was a little kid we ate at home at the dinner table, and I have these great memories of my mom cooking and my dad coming home from work, I would unload the dishwasher (begrudgingly) and my brother and I would sit with our parents and we'd have this nice family dinner. It wasn't always great, and it was almost never fancy, but it was time we'd all sit together every day. I would like to recreate that with my family.

My wife and I were married four years ago and we have an almost two year old daughter. To say she is a "picky eater" is a misstatement, because it would indicate that she prefers some foods to others. She is basically a non eater. She'll take one or two bites of a couple of things and then proclaim "All done!" and hand me her plate. But, even at 23 months, we tell her that dinner time is family time and she has to stay at the table while we finish. I want to continue this as she grows, and hope to lead by example that my non eating toddler will eventually get with the program and enjoy shoveling food down her gullet as much as her moms.

This little project will also, I'm sure, please my wife who controls our budget. She said we need to 'tighten the belt', so here's my attempt at making this fun and exciting as we go on the ride together. This will be my "spoonful of sugar" to her belt tightening medicine. Because, really? Budgets give me a stomach ache. Gross.