I don't know if we're traditional or not . . . we're just us.

We eat dinner in front of the television.  It's a habit we got into 5 years ago and it's proven to be a hard one to break.  It's just us though so who cares, and if we have anyone over we do use the dining room table.

I love to cook.  My husband is a very picky eater from MN where salt is considered over spicing, so I sneak Indian curry and Thai dishes on him without him knowing.  It works.

On Friday nights we like to stay up late watching a movie together.  We stay up until 3am, and then we sleep in on Saturdays until noon.  I feel guilty about doing this sometimes, but it's our time together and who cares? 

We love to go on vacations and take at least one big trip a year.  We don't consider going to visit family a vacation, but an act of being a family member.  For vacations we go some where different every year.

My husband looks like a big lumberjack, which there are a lot of here in western Washington, but he is a rocket scientist complete with a pocket protector in his flannel shirt.

Life is good outside the box.

I'm LDS, and I started using prayer beads, Hindu-style, about a month ago.

I read the book, Eat, Pray, Love, where the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, mentions Hindu prayer beads and their purpose - as the person who is praying holds a bead, he is focusing in his head on that one person, or blessing, or thing he's grateful, or whatever.  When he is done, he goes to the next bead on the line.  It helps to focus his prayers. 

My prayers have always suffered - I think I have ADD or something - I'll be discussing something with Heavenly Father, and my mind wanders.  I start thinking about how tired I am.  Or how hungry I am.  Or that my knees hurt.  Or whatever.  And then I slip into "vain repetitions,"  just to get the prayer done.

After reading that book, I, on a whim, decided to use prayer beads with my prayers.  I grabbed a necklace with lots of big, chunky beads on it, and got to work.  Voila - my prayers are more meaningful than they ever, ever have been in my life.  I play with each bead - feel its contours, twist it around and around the leather that holds it together -  as I discuss each need, or each thing for which I'm grateful, or problem I'm dealing with, and when I'm done with that topic, I move to the next one.  My prayers are lasting like 15 minutes now, where before they were like one minute long.  It has opened up a whole new world. 

A very non-LDS way to pray, I think, but it's improved my relationship with my Heavenly Father, for sure.

By the way, I adore your blog.  It really is my daily pick-me-up.

• My husband does all the ironing
  
• I pick up the dog poop
• We share the garbage duty
• We always try to sit down at the table for a meal each day
• I do all the dishes
• We go to the library weekly and read picture books every day
  
• We don't send our kids to preschool (I tell everyone that we are homeschooling preschool, which they believe because I used to be a Kindergarten teacher).  We let them play and run crazy all over the house.  We try to be purposeful about teaching literacy skills and math and science concepts but if they want to race their cars down the stairs all day, WE LET THEM!
  

• My husband like to do the grocery shopping and I change flats on bikes and do other screw driver-y/wrench-y tasks.
• We homeschool our seven children.
• Did I mention we have seven children?

Well let's see.... my husband and I sleep in seperate beds and seperate rooms.  Yep, it's true.  We can't stand sleeping together.  I'm always freezing, he's always hot, and we both snore.  Not worth it.

I loath socks, and nylons.  In fact, I don't own a single pair.  I only wear closed toe shoes on Sunday, or when I take a walk.  Flip flops the rest of the time.  It just kills me when I have to visit Utah in the winter!!!

My kids often tell me our lives would be a great sitcom because we are so weird...er... non traditional.