Our Chinese teacher at BYU-Idaho gave us our first table when Joe and I got married--almost 15 years ago. It was a heavy-duty, blond, round library table. It was also pre-digital camera, so I don't have a picture of it. It was plenty big enough for our little family of two, and we even had room to invite friends and coworkers over for dinner somewhat frequently.
Three years and one child later we moved to a (maybe) 500 square foot cinder block apartment at BYU-Provo. We hauled that table up 3 flights of stairs and quickly realized it would not fit into our tiny, tiny kitchen space, so we took it to a thrift store and then went straight to Walmart to buy a $40 card table. That was a lot of money for us! Then we added Madison, and as you can see, it was a little tight.
In 2007 we moved to Cleveland, Ohio to start life out of college. Our first real furniture purchase ever (and we waited until we knew Joe had passed the bar) was to buy a real table! We spent something like $800. We loved it, and we loved all the space we had for our growing family (Grant came right after). We moved that table across the country to Texas, and then moved it to two more homes (a total of four homes) and added two more kids (Ammon and August). We celebrated birthdays, made food, colored eggs, carved pumpkins, painted pictures, assembled puzzles, and created pinewood derby cars at that table. We now officially had more people than seats, and finding room for friends and family became a little tricky.
We started to look for a new table, and sales clerks would laugh when I told them I needed a tough table--one that would allow fork gouges and permanent marker stains to add character. I usually start all our furniture purchases off with, "I have five kids." Eventually, I learned about this kind of table called a "farmhouse" table. As it turns out there are quite a few do-it-yourself plans online, but if you know us at all, you know that our do-it-yourself skills are pretty lame. Anyway, long story short, there is a guy about three streets away who is always making tables in his garage and on his driveway. We told him what we needed and he delivered it to our house this week. I pretty much had no idea what it would look like, and to make it even more exciting and suspenseful, I asked him to combine two different colors of stain, and this is what he came up with.
It has taken me a few days to get used to the new look in our dining area. It seems like it's twice the size of our last table, and we are going to have to teach our kids to pass plates and food because it's too big to reach across. Someday I would like to find better matching chairs, but for now our old ones will do.
The table isn't perfect, and there are already dings and marks in it. It is heavy duty, will last forever (hopefully!), and forks and permanent markers will only add to the beauty of the table. The bench is sturdy and can fit a lot of little bottoms on it. In fact, we can easily fit everyone at the table, and we can fit you, too!
Tonight as everyone was cleaning up after dinner (and Grant was sweeping the floor), I felt a little warm fuzzy as I realized that this is a place where we will make thousands of new memories. Food made and eaten. Hours and hours of math homework cursed at and completed. Games played. Birthdays celebrated. Friendships made. Good and hard conversations had. We will laugh and cry and pray and learn at this table.
So anyway, make your reservations and get in on the memories.
