With our crazy lives, we are so bad about eating together as a family, but I am on a mission to change that.  

This is a great initiative. Growing up, my family always ate supper together as well as breakfasts on Sunday. It was so nice to be together to talk about each others lives and days. Even though it's just my husband and I now, we make it a point to eat supper at the kitchen table and talk about our days. I love it and I look forward to continuing when our baby arrives no matter how busy things get.

This really is a great post.  Family quality time is important on so many levels.  We always had dinner at the table when I was growing up and now that I am older I realize how much I gained from those meals.  Not just the cooking and responsibility of setting the table, but communicating and the confidence of knowing someone was listening to what you had to say.  Of all the things that parents can do for their children, this might be the most important.

This is a great post. We eat dinner together every night and breakfast together every Sat/Sunday. When we talk at the table, we share more things than we nornally would have throughout the day. It is also a great way to teach the kids how to eat properly, use manners, and wait their turn to talk. My 11 year old son still shovels food in his mouth, but I am hoping that if he hears me tell him to slow down for another 7 years (or more) one day it will stick!

No matter how busy our family seems to be these days, we always find the time to have dinner together.  Kraft has a food & family magazine that is sent to my house, which has wonderful, quick, kid-friendly fare.  To sign up, or to explore their online options, go to www.kraftfoods.com.  

It saddens me that folks are pulled in so many directions that, of the families I know well, only one other actually sits down for dinner every night.

There are some extra special childhood memories that were created at my family's dining room table or in the kitchen preparing a meal together. I love the memory of my father teaching me to scramble an egg when I was 6 years old, hand on my hand, telling me "now just keep pulling it in from the sides..." My mother came from a long line of good cooks and my grandmother and her sisters were quite competitive about this. So from family meals I learned not only good table manners, but what quality food was and how to cook it. My siblings and I  became the recipients of traditional recipes that had been handed down in my mother's family for 3 generations. Cooking and baking became a hobby for both me and my brothers. We're pretty popular now at pot luck dinners.

Mealtimes also provided another vehicle for me to understand my brothers and parents as people as they expressed their ideas and views on any given happening of the day.  My brothers and father butted heads on political issues but the boys' high school jobs -- flipping burgers & life guarding -- were always a source for entertaining stories.  The conversation starters provided at the website are great too! (My favorite: how do you know when you're grown up?)

So many good and lasting benefits come from meals spent together, it's well worth the time and effort.