We flew from Northern California to Long Beach
where our wonderful friends, the Plakes,
loaned us their car, let us take over half of their house,
and welcomed us with open arms!
Truly wonderful friends!
Ken and Kim, we're thankful for you,
for the roles you play in our lives and in our kids' lives.
Love you!
We made plans for almost every morning
and almost every evening,
protecting the afternoon time for downtime and naps.
Turned out we really needed that downtime,
and had to carve in a little extra,
to help the kids (especially Tay) stay grounded.
I went to wake Tay from her downtime nap, and only saw this!
She was so out, even after I pulled the covers back
she was still sound asleep!
Traveling is quite exhausting at times!! =)
We got to stop in and spend some sweet reunion time
with our ole friends the Mackies.
Robin is a good "soul" friend
and has played the role of mentor for me on several occasions.
Kirk is our pastor from our California church
and has played the role of mentor and teacher for both of us.
And their boys are wonderful, took turns babysitting Jacob,
and engaged the biggers for a while
so we adults could sit and chat some!
Thanks Mackies for including us in your Mother's Day celebration!
We had dinner with another wonderful couple,
our dear friends the Makhloufs!
Both Greg and I worked with Anne at our ole' school,
and got to know Mac while there too.
What a generous, Christ-like, joy-filled couple of people!
Thank you for your sweet friendship Maks!!
We stopped over at Biola
and reconnected with one of Greg's ole bosses and mentors, John.
As we sat and chatted we marveled at all the changes
(both in our family and on Biola's campus)
in just the ten years since we were students!
We hit some of our most-missed restaurants and fast food places!
We had some In-N-Out, Pick-Up-Stix,
Baja Fresh, BJ's Pizza, and
our most memorable and favorite place, Chili's!
Here we're at Chili's with Ken and Kim.
We had Thomas and his new wife Dani over.
We hadn't seen them since before their wedding,
which was timed right around the time of Jacob's due date.
We had a great time quickly catching up,
and then Dani and Thomas played a rousing game of Old Maid with Taylor!
We drove into Anaheim to see our lovely friend Jane!
We spent the morning there, catching up,
standing in awe of their HUGE lemon tree
(the tree's actually small,
but the lemons are about the size of a small watermelon!)
Jane had not yet met Jacob, so she highly enjoyed giving him some sweet snuggles.
Ken and Kim were such gracious hosts.
It's fun to see how Jacob, Robbie and Taylor
bring such light and joy to their faces!
There's something special about watching others love your own kids
with as full a heart as you have for them.
We had wonderful weather while in Fullerton,
and the kids got good use of their sunglasses =)
We went to Chik-Fil-A with sweet friends,
and Taylor reconnected with her best Cali buds!
She still calls Owen and Silas "Oh-wee and Sy-Sy"
and she refers to them as her "step brothers".
She was so excited to see Eli,
she wasn't really sure what to do when she saw him!
Then we headed over to the church playground
and hung out in the shade so we weren't melting quite as badly!
These boys are SO special to our kids!
Taylor and Shannon have had a special relationship
since before she can remember!
Like I said above, there's something extra special
when you know someone loves your kids like you do!
We saw other wonderful people,
but for some reason or another
I didn't pull out my camera to capture the moment!
Maybe I was too caught up in that moment =).
There are phases I go through
where my heart aches because it's so stretched.
I love and miss so many people---from a distance!
I'm grateful for email, blogs, even Facebook,
as it keeps me in touch with people
I wish I was getting face-to-face time with!
Thanks to friends that carved out time to let us chill with you!
And to those we didn't get to see, we missed you!
Of course we don't, right now, have current plans for our next trip,
but I know we'll be back again sometime!
