I Heart SB.

Two weeks ago we packed up our family of five and braved the 7 hour drive to Santa Barbara. We did a new thing...we drove most of the way Friday night and stayed in a Motel 6.  It was a little sketchy (more the idea of it than anything) but we survived and it was kind of fun, our family of five all crammed in there late at night. We wanted to maximize our time in SB without subjecting our friends to our little army crashing on their floor. Plus who has that kind of space in Santa Barbara anyway? We did stay with friends Matt and Lindsay and their 3 kids on the 2nd night. That was generous and brave of them. :-)

The reason for the trip: Our friends are getting pretty close to having their first child and I really wanted to be there for Jos' baby shower....and pretend that I still live down the street from her!  Before that, when we arrived in town the first thing we did was hit Finn's favorite....Shoreline Park. And as we were driving down the beach front boulevard, we saw friends of ours playing soccer at the park! I love how small Santa Barbara is.

And I love this girl and the little baby boy growing inside of her! I can't wait to meet him!The baby shower was lovely, with great food, presents and time with a bunch of girls I rarely get to see. It is always special to welcome another little person into our close family of friends!

Mamas!

Nate and Jared got a little surfing in.

A rare family pic of all 5 of us!

I miss the beach so much. I think Finn does too.

Some friends from our old church in SB live right across from the park. We paid them a surprise visit and our kids just picked up like we were there yesterday! 

 Before we left we just had to go to Kids World, the coolest park in town. It was just blocks from our old place (which we also saw while visiting good friend and neighbor, Doug but forgot to take a picture) so we used to go to this park all the time. It's strange yet makes sense, that Selah doesn't remember all the places we used to frequent in Santa Barbara. Finn still seems to remember most things because we still talk about people and places there. He'll never forget Kids World though. They've got a big old whale and a shark to climb on. He used to feed it wood chips. Now he's brave enough to climb aboard!