Family time around the dinner table has always been important to me. Except, of course, when other, non-family adults are present. Until last year, my enthusiasm for let's-all-gather-around-the-table didn't extend to "real" dinner parties with my children present. If I was having guests over for dinner, I either farmed the kids out to a neighbor, or I employed an increasingly common dinner-party tactic: Let the kids eat first and get them out of the way so the adults can sit down to the real meal. Then, in November 2011, my husband left for a yearlong deployment overseas. We had a sad, empty...