I call this meeting to order!

We had a family meeting the other night, complete with a flip chart and markers. I've been living here more than two years, and I don't recall us ever having a family meeting before. Judging by the look on Stew's face and the trembling in his voice when he spoke, I don't think he was expecting the meeting. I think he was having flashbacks to when he sold high-quality furniture at a modest price. When he was in sales, Stew had lots of office meetings... which usually resulted in Stew leaving his office afterwards, driving to the nearest city park, pulling his vehicle into the parking lot, and sobbing uncontrollably for about 90 minutes. So, Stew's natural reaction whenever he's in a meeting is to simply shake his head in agreement and avoid saying anything. Unfortunately for him, Momma was running this meeting (see the Darth Vader picture), so his repeatedly shaking his head up and down while saying "sounds good to me" was not acceptable.

The agenda of the meeting was simple: to create a family plan. More specifically, to set goals relating to family (i.e., how many Stewart kids to "shoot" for), health (i.e., how to get Stew off the couch and onto the treadmill), home (i.e., when will we move out of our current love shack), careers (i.e., what will Stew be when he grows up) and finances (i.e., where can Stew find another resource to pay for his daily Starbuck's Venti Iced-Mocha now that he's burned through all his Christmas money from Grandma Helen). And just to be clear: the photo at left is a pregnant Britney Spears slurping down a Starbuck's frappuccino. It is NOT a picture of Stew, although it would be difficult to tell if he were to actually wear Britney's lovely outfit. They'd practically be twins.

Active participation in this meeting was mandatory, and Momma's business executive skills shown brightly. Dale Carnegie once said, "The expression a woman wears on her face is far more important than the clothes she wears on her back." This is all Stew could think about as he sat there trying to think of words that would please his beautiful bride and mother of his child. At one point, Stew blurted out, "You ain't got to be so bad, got to be so cold... this dog-eat-dog existence sure is gettin' old... got to have a Jones for this, a Jones for that... this runnin' with the Jones's, boy, just ain't where it's at... you gonna come back around to the sad sad truth... the dirty lowdown." With a disgusted look on her face, Momma says to him, "stop quoting Boz Scaggs songs and get serious... I want your input!"

"But I'm easily distracted by other things in the world around me," Stew replies in a plea of mercy. "I have a tough time sticking to goals... I'm more of a freelance artist. I'm like the wind."

To make a long story short (because a The Sopranos rerun is about to start on the A&E Network in 15 minutes), the two developed a family plan. And, I suspect it's only a matter of days before Momma has an Excel spreadsheet complete with bar graphs and pie charts created in order to track progress. One goal Momma and Stew set is to read more books aimed at improving their parenting skills while spending more time teaching Claire stuff. So, since I don't want to see Stew get into anymore trouble, I ran out and got him a Dr. Seuss book he can use to teach Claire NOT to mess with Momma (thanks to Aunt Michelle in Fargo for the book tip).

Speaking of books, here's a picture of Claire being read to by her best buddy, Naiya, at the cabin over the New Year's weekend.