Guest Post: Card Games & Root Beer Floats

[from Jennie, who is one of my favorite young ladies on the planet]


My Dad has worked the late shift for nearly half of my life. Because of this, my family isn’t often able to spend a whole lot of casual quality time together. I’m the youngest of nine children, three of whom still live at home (when we aren’t away at school that is – which is the majority of the year). Of course, getting all of the children together doesn’t happen unless it’s a big event like a holiday or a birthday, but I’m just talking about the immediate household family here. Consisting of me, my two immediately older brothers, my parents, and my grandmother. Those rare familial evenings are few and far between. 

Well, tonight was one of those wonderful family evenings. After church and dinner as a family (to the groanings of us children) my mother suggested excitedly that we all play a game together. Usually at this point all any of us want to do is take a nap. But I am happy to say that my usually party-pooper brother chimed in at that moment, suggesting that he could teach us all a new card game that he had learned the night before at a friend’s house. So we all gathered around the card table and proceeded to shuffle and deal out the cards. 

It was a blast. My normally sore-loser father stuck through the whole game even when he started to lose very badly, and my over-competitive mother’s excited squeals only made us laugh instead of becoming annoyed. After the third round, we took a break and put together some yummy root beer floats. All in all, it was about a two-hour ordeal. This will be one of the evenings that I remember. Though I griped tiredly at first, I am so glad that we ended up doing it.


 I am so grateful for the small things that bring my family together – as small as a new card game and a root beer float. I am grateful that we can NOT gripe at each other occasionally, even if it’s only for a few hours. We always love each other, of course, but these nights truly show the eternal nature of what we have together. Someday in the eternities, we’ll be able to look back on our earthly ventures and say, “Hey, remember that time we learned a new card game and partook of those delicious earthly root beer floats?!” 

What are you grateful for today?