Recap!

I just awoke from a wonderful nap in which I was at a grand old city library, that not only had books galore, but also had clothes from every year in the past century for sale. Needless to say, it was heaven! Books and vintage clothes in the same location! Unfortunately, I also dreamed that a Winnie the Pooh movie was released in which Christopher Robin commits suicide at the end, much to the trauma of American children.

Well, it's been quite a few days for Sean and I. Right now we are up in Foster City visiting Sean's parents. We got in last night, when we flew in stand-by from Los Angeles. Kendrick drove us to the airport at sunset, cruising along the 105-West, listening to Coldplay. We were blessed to get on the first flight, and about an hour later we landed at SFO. It's so lovely to have a few days off just to relax. I made sure to take a very long bubble bath last night, reading the back issues of People magazine and my latest midwifery chronicle.


Today we had lunch with Sean's friend and mentor, Tom, who is officiating our wedding. It's really exciting to start seeing even the smaller details of the wedding come together. Last night I went to the Book of Common Prayer online and copied and pasted the traditional ceremony into a Word document and then edited it to get it exactly how we want it. I think it's going to be a beautiful ceremony.

Anyway, like I said, it's been a busy week. On Tuesday night, my cousin Lisa was in town visiting from Raleigh, North Carolina. Sean and I drove down to Long Beach to meet up with her and have dinner. Meeting up with her was the easy part, as we found her quite quickly, picking her up from Long Beach Memorial Medical Center (where her dad is staying right now), but finding a place to eat proved to be more difficult. Lisa's iPhone's GPS kept insisting that we were in Colorado as Sean and I struggled to follow his friend's directions to Long Beach's downtown district. Anyway, after an hour and a half of driving around, we finally ended up in the Shoreline area and ate dinner at The Rock Bottom Brewery, which Sean really loved because "rock bottoming" people is one of Sean's favorite phrases. It was so fun to see a familiar face all the way out here in California. I had forgotten how much fun Lisa is to hang out with, and since I haven't seen her since the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college, we had quite a lot of catching up to do!

On Wednesday, I spent the day with Emily Moothart and her three adorable boys. In the morning, while the boys were having Quiet Time, she and I got to talk a lot, and once the boys got up we made Clover Rolls in honor of St. Patrick's Day. I've been thinking a lot about my future...you know, career options, grad school, stuff like that. But being in their home, and making bread with those precocious little boys confirmed all of my deepest convictions that what I want more than anything is to be a wife and mom. Forget fancy degrees, I know that I will be happy as a clam if I have enough children to keep me busy, and, of course, if I get to share life with Sean every day.

Wednesday night I babysat for Madison and Taylor. We watched Finding Nemo, which made me cry, and then Disney Princess Sing Along Songs. SO GOOD! Madison went into her room to put on her Belle dress--to get in character for the sing-along--and I asked her if she needed help. "No, I can do it by myself. I need some pri-acy," she told me in no uncertain terms. Never mind that she cannot yet pronounce the word "privacy" correctly, she is most decidedly an independent little girl.

On Thursday, Sean and I got to have lunch with Dr. and Mrs. Corey...in the President's office! It was really awesome! Each time Sean tells the story to other people, it grows a little more absurd..."We ate lobster that the President caught with his bare hands that very morning..." But in all seriousness, it was a delicious catered lunch, and we got to tell them how we met, and about our Biola experiences, and our plans for the future, as well as hear advice from them about marriage and stuff. It really helped me to realize just how much I've loved Biola and been blessed by it.

Thursday afternoon, Sean came with me to babysit Claire and Nicholas, since he didn't have classes due to Missions Conference. We took them on a walk to the park, and picked dandelions and went down the slides and played basketball, and just had a great time. On the walk back to their house, Sean was carrying Claire, and she asked him if he was my daddy. He said no, so she asked him if he was my little boy! Hahaha! When we left three and a half hours later, Sean was like, "Care, how do you do it? That is such hard work!"

So, for now we are going to keep enjoying our time up here as much as possible before we have to go back to L.A. and back to work and back to the books. But I'm enjoying our little respite up in the Bay Area!