New Artist in the Family

Lately Ben has started doing more drawing. This is one of his recent creations: a family portrait of the Knapps next-door. His style of drawing people makes me laugh every time I see it. I like to think that I keep my laughter to myself, but I have to admit that sometime they're so funny that I can't help but crack up at his drawing.

Description of this picture:
"This is a crocodile. [Pointing at squiggles to the left] These are his things that squish up his food. ('His intestines?') Yeah, those."
A few minutes later: "Actually, it’s a toy crocodile. He has a flashlight in his mouth."
More minutes later: "Actually, no, it’s a real crocodile. His friend bit his leg and tore it off. ('Wow, that’s not a very nice friend, is it?') No. And then he got a cast from the animal doctor. Then the friend went to the animal jail. And he’s not strong enough to get out."


It's fascinating to watch Ben draw a picture. He'll draw a little bit and then make up a story to go along with what he's drawn. Usually the pictures involve people fighting. Then he'll draw some more and change the story as he goes. Sometimes his pictures and accompanying story get very complex. By the time he's done with the scene, it'll be a mess of lines and squiggles and strange-looking people which tells the story of an epic battle between good and evil.

Ben said this was a chicken. It looks like one crazy chicken to me.

Some day soon I'm going to make one of these books for each of the kids' artwork. I've been taking photos of their artwork ever since their first scribble. I don't like saving the actual papers because we don't the space (and, let's face it, I can't stand clutter). But how cool would it be to have a nice, compact book that contained hundreds of their paintings, drawings, and other creations? Very cool indeed.

Six Days

Baby P napping through a (rather loud) baby shower

Our latest foster care experience lasted six days. We got "Baby P" on Thursday afternoon and she returned to her mom the following Tuesday afternoon. 

We are getting a lot of short-term, short-notice, newborns since we are an Emergency Shelter Home. When a child is taken from the birth parents, it is usually a sudden, unplanned event. The children we get, as an ESH, have little warning, and often are far more likely to leave our care in a matter of days once the situation is figured out by the social worker. If the child ends up staying in foster care and/or adoption, we would be high on the list so the kid does not have to move again. 

Anyways, this is a random list of things I've learned from our latest three placements.

1. It has been so important to have a clear idea of why we are doing foster care, and set it in the forefront of our minds. Our main intention for doing foster care has been to bring children into our home to show them love and care for however long they need. Adoption is secondary. There came a time last week when we had to make a very quick, and very difficult decision. Because we knew that our objective basically boiled down to helping kids now, we were able to make a good decision. 

If our objective was to find a child to keep, it would affect so many of our decisions. Do we take a placement we know would be very temporary? Do we do our best to accommodate birth parents and push for reunification? Do we bond and love a child whose future with us is likely short-lived, and will never remember us?  Those are critical questions that have different answers depending on your motives. You can't hide your true motives when the hard and painful choices come.

2. The first few days of bringing a baby home (even a healthy, happy baby) will be very difficult. The baby is in a foreign environment with new smells, sounds, and sights and they plain just miss their mama. With our last placement, the baby was fussy, didn't like to be put down, didn't sleep during the day, and woke up four times a night - for the first two days. On the third day, she was like a brand-new kid! She smiled when I picked her up and talked to her, she started sleeping through the night for 7-hour stretches and started napping during the day like a normal three-month old. 

3. We should trust very little that we are told about the case we're dealing with, even from authoritative sources, like the case worker. We've realized that there are so many people involved in the process of removing a child from its parents and placing it in a foster care home. Each person sees a different slice of the picture and relays only that information to us. Often, the information is incomplete or incorrect. Core facts in the story are constantly changing as more is revealed, investigated and clarified over time. Which leads to....

4. Learning to be flexible. This concept is still being pounded into us, and we're slowly getting better at it. We are planners by nature. We are not obsessive, but we take comfort in organization.  And now, so many decisions are made by other people which have a great impact on our lives and schedule. To some degree, in becoming a foster parent you agree to hand over control of some of your life to government workers. We have been eating out a LOT lately, out of necessity.  
- What, there's another visitation tomorrow that you JUST told me about, and it's during my kids' nap time? 
- Oh, now instead of just a visitation, the baby is actually being returned to her mom in an hour? Gather her things and say goodbye quickly!
- You paid a non-refundable fee in advance for a Women's Retreat? Sorry, you have a new placement to pick up a few days before and won't be able to go.
- You gave your Women's Retreat ticket away, thinking you were not going? Well, the child is not coming home, so you can go again, and you need to buy another ticket because you just gave the other one away. (Actually it all worked out in the end and we didn't have to buy an extra ticket, but it was close!)
- We just showed up at 3 PM to pick up a new placement, but we need to wait at the assessment center, with our kids, for 2 hours since the doctor ordered some last minute tests just as we were about to walk out the door. No time to make dinner. Time to eat out again. 

5. I need to start letting go of the idea of having a clean house. It is really difficult to get anything done with a baby in the house, beyond keeping us all fed and in clean clothes (and barely even then). However, I am also seeing that having a solid routine helps tremendously when adding another child to the mix. Baby P fit right into our schedule, after some tweaking.

6. Try not to cancel any plans. We tried to keep life as normal as possible, even if that meant that things got a little crazy for a few days. We can't continually make plans and cancel them whenever we get a new placement. During the few days we had Baby P, I had a few play-dates with friends, ran my usual errands with three kids in tow, had friends over for dinner, helped throw a baby shower, and helped set up for my mom's group. Which goes back to #4: learning to be flexible (and relaxed)!


Now we're back on the call list at the children's shelter, so we could get another placement any day. Luckily I got a full night's rest and managed to pick up the shambles that was my house before we get any more calls!

Happy 4th Birthday, Ben!

You turned four last week. Since you're the youngest child, your turning four hasn't really been too emotional for me. In many ways, you seem like such a big kid that it feels like you should have been four a few months ago. (Also, you've been telling people that you're four for the past half-year, so I feel like you should be five already!) You can do so much for yourself now: get your own snacks, clean up your messes without being asked, dress yourself, and help with your laundry. 

You're very physical. You're great at playing catch, you're a fast runner, and an amazing climber. Your dad and I are thinking we're going to have to put you in sports someday. In the photo above you were having the greatest time doing flips on my bed. You have a competitive nature. You turn everything into a race- eating breakfast, running out to the car, getting dressed in the morning- and you hate to be last.

You are a kind brother. You share willingly with Tommy, and you even gave him one of your gifts to open on your birthday. You love people and you talk to strangers as if they're already a friend. You give everyone hugs, and you'd give them kisses too if I didn't curb that practice! 


I looked back at this post from when you were 3½ to see how you've changed in the last six months. You still complain about doing work around the house, but not as much as you used to. Sometimes you'll even ask me if there's anything you can do to help around the house. You no longer look at books upside down- for a while we were a little worried that you had some learning issues because of your preference to look at books backwards, read things backwards, and write backwards and upside down. Now that you're reading and writing more, I can see that was just a short-lived phase.


Benji, I'm looking forward to watching you grow into a kind, friendly, outgoing boy. I can't wait to see what God has in store for you this upcoming year.

Click here to see photos from Ben's birthday and his party.

Our Newest Charge

We've been the foster parents of this baby girl for two weeks now. Well, we're technically her foster parents, but we haven't actually brought her home yet because she's been in the NICU. I can't say very much about her here, but I can say that she's really cute. And she's very awake and aware of her surroundings, alarmingly so for a such a young baby.


We've gotten a lot more experience navigating the world of foster care. We have learned to be very loose and laid back about our plans. We are normally such planners that we like to prepare as much as we can when we know something is going to happen. Well, when you do that with foster care, it often backfires because things can change so quickly. With this little one, we thought she was going to come home the next day after getting the call for her. So we made plans and preparations for a newborn to come home within 24 hours. We cancelled some things and shifted other things. I cleaned a lot of things (what is it about babies that makes women want to clean things?). Then plans changed and then we thought she'd come home the next day. Then plans changed yet again, and we found out we weren't going to get her for at least another two weeks. Lesson learned: Don't make plans, because they'll most likely change anyway.


We've been doing our best to visit this little one while she's in the NICU. She's in a hospital forty minutes away, which makes visiting difficult, especially with kids and a working husband. But we're doing the best we can, thanks to generous family and friends who have offered to watch our boys while we (and sometimes just I) make the trek up to the hospital. We're all looking forward to her coming to live with us soon.

Birthday Interview with Ben - Age 4

I have to say that Ben wasn't terribly interested in doing this interview, so the answers should be taken with a grain of salt. I conducted it during breakfast, because mealtimes are pretty much the only times he's sitting still enough to carry on a conversation. It was a little difficult getting him to answer me, like he couldn't be bothered to give 'ol mom an interview while munching on his english muffin. The answers are funny anyway. 


So how do you think it'll feel to be four?

I wish we could go to LegoLand when I’m four.

What kinds of things can you do now that you’re almost four that you couldn’t do when you were littler?

I can spin the tire swing when I’m in the middle without anyone helping.

What is your favorite color?

Green

What is your favorite food?  

Strawberries

What is your least favorite food?  

Egg sandwiches - those things you make us when we go to Mothering by Heart.

What is your favorite book?

Daddy’s Star Wars pop-up book

What is your favorite toy?

My police car

Do you have any friends? Who are they?

Kirsten. (Any others?) Maffew.

What is your favorite thing to do with mom?

Have ice cream.

What is your favorite thing to do with dad?

Play on the bed.

What is your favorite thing about yourself?

I don’t want to do this one.

What is your favorite thing to do outside?

Play jump ball. 

Where is your favorite place to go?

Pump it Up, Gilroy Gardens, and LegoLand.

What do you want to do for a job when you grow up? 

Read the Star Wars pop-up book to our foster child. (No, I mean for a job, when you’re a grown up. Like, how Daddy works on the computer.) Oh. Policeman.

Where do you want to live when you grow up?  

Near Diana Park. I would go there every day after naps.

Do you think you’ll get married when you grow up? Who do you think you’ll marry?

Kirsten. (Actually, you can’t marry your cousin. Anyone else you'd like to marry?) But I want to! (more explanation about marriage rules...) Ok, then. Essie.

How old will you be when you get married?

Thirteen.

Where do babies come from?

Tummies.

Is there anything you’re afraid of?

Monsters. And lions, ‘cuz they are gonna eat me.

Food Artist

The other day at the library we found a new series of books by Saxton Freymann. We all got really excited about these books because the pictures are just so cool. They use scenes made out of food to tell a story. I got almost all Freymann books the library owned, five in all, but I left a few so as not to be a hoarding library patron. Tommy pored over these books as soon as we got home from the library. Then he decided to make some of his own food creations. He got to work cutting up all the veggies and experimenting with how they fit together. Below is a sampling of some of his creations. He constructed these completely on his own. 

 His first creation: Cucumber Car

Carrot Jet

His pièce de résistance. I have no idea what this is, but I do know he was working on it diligently for over an hour. It started out just being a carrot car with turnip umbrellas (if you look closely through the gobs of grapes, you might be able to find it). Then he kept adding grapes and more grapes, until, he decided he was finished.

It was fun to see him get excited about something new and take initiative to figure things out for himself. He now says that he wants to be a food artist when he grows up and he's going to open up a restaurant that only serves fruit and vegetables. He's going to call his restaurant "Tom's". Stay tuned, because this is one vegetarian restaurant you're going to want to try when it opens!

24 Hours of Foster Care

The last 24 hours have been a crazy whirlwind of activity. In that time, we got our first foster child and then saw her reunited with her mother. We've heard the advice from veteran foster parents that we need to be flexible and open to sudden change of plans. Now we definitely see what they mean. Here's a timeline of the past day:

Thursday morning:

10:00am: I get a call (while I'm in the middle of baking cookies with my boys) about a two day old baby girl, about to be discharged from the hospital, who needs a foster home. Amidst a flurry of phone calls, I make all the arrangements to pick her up. At this point, we know very little about the baby's situation, but we do get the idea that this will be a short-term stay. We figure sometime later next week she might be reunited with her mom.

2:00pm: I head to Target to pick up last-minute things I'll need for a baby girl. Important things like pink pajamas. And some diapers, bottles and formula.

4:00pm: We pick her up at the hospital.

5:00pm: Baby comes home. The boys are totally in love with her. Tommy, in particular, keeps trying to find ways to help out with the baby by bringing me her little hat, a stuffed animal, and asking to hold her. For the next several hours, she eats, sleeps, and poops. She repeats the cycle several times. She has a normal newborn night, waking up a few times and pooping a few times.

Friday 9:30am: I follow foster parent protocol by scheduling a doctor appointment for baby and contacting her social worker.

10:30am: I get a phone call from baby's social worker that she is going to be reunited with her mom later in the day, and could I perhaps bring her to the social services building right after her doctor appointment? I say "Of course", but my mind is totally reeling from the sudden change of plans. After another flurry of phone calls, a load of laundry, and some frantic running around the house to gather baby items, baby is packed up and ready to go.

2:30pm: Baby has her doctor appointment.

4:00pm: Baby is reunited with her mama. I drive home in the pouring rain and traffic trying to gather my wits about me and come to terms with the newest change of plans.

I'm sad that this experience is over so quickly. It was fun to take care of a newborn baby girl, despite the several wake-ups at night. But ultimately, I'm happy that the baby was reunited with her mom. 

I wasn't prepared for the complex emotions of it all. When we picked up the baby at the hospital, I was near tears most of the time. Driving up to the hospital all I thought about was the fun and excitement of caring for a brand new baby girl. But when I got there it really hit me that there was another mother on the other side things who was going home without her baby girl. I could imagine the pain she must have.

Foster care is not about finding ourselves a baby to keep; it is about helping children and their parents become well enough to stay together. 

We are so thankful for all the support and love from the people who read our blog and facebook. However, something that caught us by surprise was the comments of hopefulness that we will keep our new foster child, or comments of sadness when the child was reunited.  

It is easy to understand these reactions, since most people know of our history with miscarriage and infertility. We know that our friends are hoping for the best for us. However, that is not what this is about. We are not doing foster care to facilitate a longed-for adoption. We are open to adoption. If it happens, that would be great. But that is not the purpose we are working towards. 

When a child is reunited with his family, that is the best outcome that can happen. A broken family is made whole. The loss we feel when we let the child go is temporary. The purpose of foster care is to serve, not to keep.

Someday we may care for a child who ends up staying with us forever. But when that happens, it will be bittersweet because it means that another family failed to stay together.

Tommy multitasking: feeding the baby and doing his reading lesson. He was begging to hold her practically the whole time she was with us. It was really sweet to see him act so lovingly. 

A New Reader

For the past two years, Tommy's reading has been at about the same level. He could sound out words (very short ones in the beginning, then longer ones as time went on), and he could even string them together to read a short sentence. But the process was drudgery and he didn't like to do it for longer than five minutes at a time.

But something clicked with him in the past month. Now reading is more fluent and almost effortless for him. Just after Christmas he became interested in reading his Bob books, and he breezed through three sets of them. Now he's working through easy readers from the library and mastering them quickly.

I've always heard that one shouldn't push a child to learn to read. I'm glad I didn't push Tommy even though he seemed interested in reading. It really is true that they'll pick up reading quickly when they're ready for it. Watching him zip through books and improve so rapidly has been like seeing a miracle take place before my eyes.

Mother of Invention

It's been said that necessity is the mother of invention. In my case, lately it's been growth spurts that is the mother of invention. These boys are eating almost constantly, despite having full and well-balanced meals three times a day. Yogurt has always been one of my go-to snacks for them during growth spurts. It's healthy, full of protein and calcium, and when I buy it by the single-serving cup, they can get it themselves. For the longest time, I would buy the large quart-size container of yogurt and then mix in jam and granola on an as-needed basis. But that became time consuming and made me not even want to do it.


I've always bought yogurt cups at Trader Joe's because they are the cheapest and least-processed ones I've found. But they are tiny cups, and not a match for my boys' appetite anymore. Especially at $4 for a pack of six cups. Once I got a big pack of Yoplait yogurt once because it was a bigger cup and cheaper than Trader Joe's but didn't realize until I got it home that it had 26 grams of sugar! That's 6.5 teaspoons in one little cup!


So I had the idea to make my own yogurt cups. I got a pack 8 oz. of canning jars at Target. Then I had the kids help me fill them up: 1 tbsp. jam on the bottom, then yogurt (enough to fill the jar 3/4 the way), and 1/4 cup granola on top. We've been having yogurt this way for a few weeks and it's been great. It saves a lot of money, and I'm happy knowing that my kids aren't getting any processed junk.

 Adding blueberry jam (Trader Joe's reduced sugar type) to the bottom...

 ...then comes yogurt...

 ...and finally granola.

I wrote R for raspberry jam and B for blueberry jam on top of the jars. Some people are very picky about the flavor of their yogurt.

2012 To Do List - And 2011 Report Card

I'm continuing my tradition of looking at the goals I set for myself over the past year and grading myself based on how well I stuck with them. I also came up with some new goals for this next year.

1. Lose weight. C 

I lost the 10 lbs that I'd been trying to lose for the last few years. My clothes felt looser, I felt fitter and had more energy. And then I gained 5 lbs back because I stopped being careful about my eating habits and slacked off with my running. Boo.

2. Decrease Internet time. B

My overall success with this was good. For the most part, I've been good about not mindlessly browsing the web when I should be doing other things (like losing weight). But there were a few weeks here and there that I wasted way too much time on the web.

3. Read the whole Bible again. B

I read the Bible just about every day, but didn't get through the whole thing again. I stopped doing my reading plan for a few months to try a few other methods of study. One method was to read the same portion of the Bible each day for a month. There are some great advantages to reading the Bible this way, but I really missed going through the whole story this year. 

4. Take part in a Photo-a-Day project. F

I dropped this back in January because it conflicted with goal #2.

5. Read more good books. A+

I was able to read lots and lots of good books over the past year. Some of my favorites are:

Raising Real Men, The Read-Aloud Handbook, Just Do Something, Adopted for Life, Think, How to Read a Book, Positive Discipline and Bossypants. Okay, so that last one wasn't really great literature, but it certainly was entertaining!

For 2012:

1. Run a 10K. I ran a 5K last July and am planning on running another one in March. If I do two more 5K races the few months after that, I think it's within the realm of possibilities to squeeze in a 10K by the end of this year. I've started doing training for 10K using an app on my phone, which will hopefully get me back in the groove of running and help me with my next 5K. I'm on Week 4 and it hasn't been too bad. It is longer than I'm used to because the run/walk cycles go for 50-70 minutes instead of 30-40 minutes that I was used to with the 5K training.

2. Spend at least 10 minutes one-on-one time with each of my kids every day. Something that I've been slacking off on the past half year is spending quality time with each of my kids. We have plenty of quality time all together, but not much with each of them personally. This is partly because we've been busy. But mostly it's because they love spending almost every minute of their day playing together, so there's hardly a time when I can get them alone. But since I've been thinking about this, I've noticed that there are actually small pockets of time when one boy is off doing something and the other one is still in the room with me. I want to be more purposeful about snatching up those moments and starting a conversation or do something fun with them. 

3. Commit to eating only real food. Using the 14-step plan from this website, I want to try to cut out all of the processed foods and extra junk from our diet. We generally eat healthy and we get most of our fruits and veggies from local organic farms. But there is still so much room for improvement. Some of the items on the 14-week plan will be easy (like giving up sugary juices - we only drink water and milk anyway), but some others will a lot harder, like Week 3: Eat Only Local Meat or Week 12 - No Extra Sweeteners: I wonder how my kids will eat their oatmeal when it's not drizzled with honey? Or how I'll eat my oatmeal without honey!

4. Read the whole Bible again. I plan to use my favorite reading plan, from Discipleship Journal and stick with it this time. :)

Christmas 2011

We had a very enjoyable Christmas weekend. On Christmas Eve we just hung around the house, visited family, and had a relaxing day. We went to church in the evening and took part in West Hills' beautiful Christmas Eve service.

We put our gifts out on Christmas eve 

 Christmas Eve pancakes: gingerbread pancakes with sprinkles (and others had crushed candy cane)

Christmas Day was a lot of fun. Mark's parents and grandma joined us for Christmas morning and enjoyed watching the boys open their presents. The boys loved having their grandparents over for Christmas morning.

 Present opening

One of the boys' favorite gifts was a pack of water guns which, I have to admit, we didn't even buy. Throughout the year, Mark's mom will give us thrift store and garage sale finds for the boys - stuff she finds that she knows the boys will love, and that she got at an incredible discount. Sometimes we'll give the stuff to them right away, and sometimes we'll tuck it away to save for later. These water guns were one of the things I tucked away and totally forgot about. I didn't remember them until I was doing some pre-Christmas purging and found them in the back of a closet. Tommy immediately filled his with water and headed outside to 'test' it. The boys played with them the rest of the day.

After present opening, we played with our gifts (the boys played with their guns, I played with the ice cream maker Mark gave me and made some strawberry ice cream ;). We took a walk through our local vineyard - the boys brought their water guns and shot everything in sight with water. In the evening we had dinner with Mark's family. It was a relaxed, low-key day, but still very full and a lot of fun.  

Doing Christmas Things

For some reason, I haven't been able to get into the "holiday spirit" this year. All month it hasn't bothered me too much; I think I was hoping that the closer we got to Christmas, the more I'd get in the spirit of things. But so far, it feels like a normal month, just with more stuff to do. Since I've got kids who are old enough to remember doing fun things last year at Christmastime, I haven't been able to get away with actually pretending it's a normal month (not that I would actually do that. Ahem.)

So, here are some of the fun Christmas things we've been up to:

Cutting down our Christmas tree at a local tree farm.

Decorating our Christmas tree. This year we let the boys have full autonomy with decking it with ornaments. So what if all the ornaments ended up in the bottom four feet of the tree?

Fast forward two weeks. The tree in the above photos died. It was really depressing having a completely dead tree with two weeks left until Christmas, so we got a cheap replacement from Home Depot. That'll teach us to keep a closer eye on the tree's water level! Sidenote: Don't these LED lights make our living room look like a disco?

Making Christmas cards for family.

Rolling molasses cookies. I love that the boys are old enough to be able to help with useful (and tedious) things like rolling cookie balls. 

 Frosted and sprinkled molasses cookie. Not sure why the cookie maker was so somber.

Glitter snowflakes. 

One night we surprised the boys with driving around looking at Christmas lights. Mark researched all the good spots in San Jose. As you can see, some of the houses were just incredible.


I'm thankful that the real reason we celebrate Christmas isn't about cookies or twinkle lights or presents. When I think about it, much of the 'Christmas feelings' that I'm missing out on are just associated with cultural traditions. The real purpose of Christmas is to celebrate and be thankful that God sent us his only son, in the humble form of an infant, who would grow up to be our savior. It's about more than being in 'the holiday spirit'; it's remembering every day throughout the year that Christ has saved us. When I think of Christmas in that way, it doesn't bother me so much that I'm not feeling so holly-jolly.

Licensed for Foster Care!

As of November 30, we are officially licensed as foster parents! This means that we can start taking in children, however, our licensing social worker recommended that we hold off on accepting kids until our adoption home study is complete and approved, so we probably won't get The Call for a child until after the new year. Thinking about all the unknowns can be overwhelming - we have no idea of the age, sex, health conditions, or emotional temperament, let alone that we don't know when we'll get that call. We're praying that God would give us what we can handle, and that he would give us the grace to handle whatever he gives us. It's both really exciting and a little scary waiting for that first placement.


This whole process has been confusing as we have gone through it, but it makes sense now that we're done with it. When we started, I don't think we realized how involved it would be. To get a bigger picture of the process, here's a complete list of all the steps we've gone through to complete this process:


1. Attend foster parent orientation (August 23)
2. Complete 10-week long PRIDE classes (October 18)
3. Hand in applications for foster care and adoption (November 8)
(This step included many appointments for fingerprinting, TB testing, physical examinations, CPR training, and other things that are too many to list!)
4. Home inspection for foster care (November 16)
5. Foster care license issued (November 30)
6. Joint interview with Mark and I for adoption home study (November 29)
7. Two-hour long interview with me (December 6)
8. Two-hour long interview with Mark (December 7)
9. Home visit for adoption home study (December 9)
10. Homestudy submitted and approved (Hopefully sometime in the next two weeks)

 We've been getting the house ready for a new little one. The Baby Room furniture was ready a while ago, but now things are really ready. The closet is filled with cleaned baby gear and boys' and girls' clothing sorted by size from 0 to 24 months (which are the ages we're accepting). Everything is organized so that we can grab what we need at a moment's notice. When we get the call to go pick up a new little one, we'll only have hours to scramble to get ready for his or her arrival. 

Baby toys sorted and sanitized. 

 Baby and toddler books - I'm looking forward to re-reading these favorites.

 Our new baby crazy son who played baby all morning after I reattached the side to the crib. 

Beach Friday 2011

This year we continued our tradition of going to the beach the day after Thanksgiving. We went to the aquarium first, then had a yummy lunch at a café. After lunch we headed to the beach to frolic in the tide pools. 

Ben got completely wet from jumping in the beach puddles. Good thing I learned from past experience to bring several changes of clothes.

Pointing at a tiny crab, who is trying to escape the sticky suckers of a sea star.

We had a wonderful time at the beach this year. On Thursday night we were exhausted from cooking and cleaning up from our meal, and I was thinking that I didn't even want to go to the beach this year. But by Friday morning, I couldn't wait to get out of the house. The timing each year is always perfect. We've all been cooped up in the house all week preparing for the Big Meal, so by Friday morning, we can't wait to get out of the house and go on an adventure.

There were a few moments on our drive home from the beach (it was around 4:30pm) where I was trying to figure out what we'd have for dinner when we got home. Then it hit me: Duh. Leftovers! We got home and had a feast of Thanksgiving leftovers and put tired little boys to bed with tummies full of turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce. It was a great day.