There's Finally Room at the Table

I remember when our dining table, which could seat six, felt unnecessarily large.  It was just Chris and me across from each other with Oliver seated in his booster seat at the head of the table. Even when Soren came along, we still didn't use half the table and papers and magazines and other clutter could pile up on one end of the table with plenty of room left for our family to sit down to dinner.  Then our first au pair arrived and a few months later we brought Kiera and Matteo home and our family of seven technically no longer fit around the table. Every night at dinner, we'd pull the time-out chair out of the corner and make three chairs try to fit where only two are supposed to.

After a year and a half of this arrangement, there's finally room at the table for our whole family - and even a couple of guests. The drawn-out process of "making sure we can fit our family" is finally complete. We bought a minivan when we started the adoption process, broke ground on the addition to our house when we realized we were going to be doubling the number of children in our family and can now sit down more comfortably for a meal in the fully-renovated house. 

Here's a pro tip for making a major purchase quickly and decisively.  Bring four young children on an hour's drive to a 60,000-square-foot furniture showroom, set them loose and then make your customized table selections while your children burn off their energy jumping on the beds, playing "don't get off the couch" (thanks Grandpa Dan...) and tearing around the store like they own the place. The sales guys had looked like they were involved in a desperate game of "not it" when they saw us walk in, but the young man who lost ended up making the fastest commission of his career thanks to us.

We may have gambled with our hasty decisions, but we love our new table. It comfortably seats eight, yet can easily squeeze in 10, and can seat 12 with the additional leaf.  It's not only nice that there's room at the table for our family, but that there's room for guests to join us.