Food for Thought

Today I began to realize just how much food is consumed in our home each day. Over the past 12 years we have changed from a couple to a family of four children. With three boys and a very tall girl, we eat a large amount of food each day. I just did not realize how much more as compared with others around us. However, I was confronted with this very fact not once but twice today.

In Sunday school, we were discussing how Jesus is the bread of life. The teacher was commenting on how universal bread is. He then asked some people at the front of the room to state how much bread was consumed by their family each day. Or so I thought.... Most of the responses were 1 loaf. The teacher asked me how much bread we eat each day, and I responded that we eat 1-2 loaves per day depending on how hungry our 12 year old son is. Every head turn on that response. That was when I realized that most people had answered a loaf a week. Great! Now everyone knows to hide the food when the Schneiders are around.

The other instance happened at supper. We had a wonderful, polite young man over for supper. His family consists of two parents, a very petite sister, and himself. I cooked a pound of macaroni and made mac and cheese. I dished out the portions, giving him a smaller portion just in case he did not care for my version of Mac and Cheese. I dished out the rest of the pot to the other kids realizing that I should have made two pounds of pasta instead of one. Our guest realized that we had run low on the food and commented that if I had made the whole one pound box of pasta, we would have had plenty and perhaps even leftovers. Imagine his surprise when I told him that I had made the whole box and that I often make two pounds of pasta at a time and not just one pound. Poor kids now knows that "Eat fast or starve" is the motto of the Schneider kids. How else did they get to be so close to the top of the growth chart. Now if I could just get them to do their school work with the same amount of speed as they exhibit at the supper table. We'll keep working on that.

Five more inches in height and Matt will pass Mom!