Last weekend we were in Chicago attending a friend’s wedding. When we received the invitation, Paul and I went back and forth on taking the kids or having a nice little weekend to ourselves. When these considerations were being made, Paul had just completed a couple of months of whirlwind travel, so both of us were leery of anything that took him away from the kids.

Then there was the certainty that our kids would have all been heartbroken to miss “Miss Lisa’s” wedding, especially because they were all longing to see her dog, Jersey. Jersey is a ten year old Golden Retriever who is an absolute prince of a dog and he’s certainly treated like one. He is playful and obedient and extremely good natured. My kids love him. We hadn’t seen Lisa or Jersey for a couple of years and all the kids would mention them from time to time with a plaintive, “We really need to go visit Miss Lisa and Jersey!” We knew that, at ten, Jers is, if not yet walking to the light, he is definitely getting closer to it and we both knew it would mean a lot to all the children to see him again.

But what really decided it was knowing how much fun we would have at the reception. We all, from Paul down to The Bean, love to dance. Love it. Unfortunately, outside of weddings, there aren’t any venues for a family of five to get down, get down. And so it became a family affair which, with the exception of the cocktail hour that stretched to two when Eden was melting down from tiredness, heat and hunger, we didn’t regret it.

I’ll tell you more later as I need to run and educate the homeschoolers, but I’ll leave you with this: as he slid into his chair at the reception, Christopher said, “I REALLY hope there is dancing so that I can do my signature move.”

I told Lisa this the next day at brunch. She laughed. “He did NOT say ‘signature move’!”

But he did.