My future husband and I grew up in different states so we had to make an effort to get to know each other’s families prior to the wedding. Once we announced our engagement we planned several vacation weekends to visit each other’s homes. It is about a four-hour ride to his parents house so we always left early in the afternoon to get there in time for supper. He grew up where family meal time is very important so I wanted to make a good impression on my future mother-in-law. I’m not much of a cook myself so I took advantage of spending time in the kitchen with her preparing the meals when I could. The only downfall to that was the fact that they don’t have air conditioning in their house and it was the middle of summer so it made cooking very uncomfortable. She had worked that way all of her life so she didn’t seem to notice and I tried to keep a positive attitude throughout the whole ordeal. My fiance would joke with me on the way home each time because he said he could tell by the look on my face I wasn’t really happy spending time in the kitchen. I told him he was welcome to join us and spend time with his mom as well but he declined and said he would rather hang out with his dad in the backyard. I told him that he was fortunate because at least he could take advantage of a breeze outside and not be stuck in a hot humid kitchen. I also told him that if he expected me to make family meals everyday I better have a climate-controlled environment to do it in.