The Last Fun Thing

The night before Josiah was born, Jeff and I went out with some of our closest friends to eat at Denny's after a midweek church service.  It was a joyous time of fellowship (and I happen to remember that I ate grits).  :)  

The day before David was born, Jeff and I took Josiah to a seaside park in Tel Aviv where he scampered around in the sand, went down a slide, and chased seagulls, while we all enjoyed the gorgeous view of the Mediterranean.

The night before Tobin was born, Jeff and I took Josiah and David to the theater (a fairly rare occurrence for our family) to watch the VeggieTales movie The Pirates who Don't Do Anything.

The night before Shav was born, we took Josiah, David, and Tobin to a nearby park where Jeff watched them play on the playground equipment while I sat and listened to a free concert of barbershop quartets.  Oh, and I ate an M&M Blizzard from Dairy Queen.

The night before Moriah was born, Jeff took all of us to Sweet Bee to have frozen yogurt.

The night before Benjamin was born, the boys and I had a fun time playing Mexican Train dominoes while Moriah wandered back and forth from our game at the kitchen table to the living room to build her own track from another set of dominoes (and Jeff napped on the couch, which happened to be excellent preparation for what would transpire later that night).

Of course, we didn't know and couldn't have planned to do one last special family fun thing the day or night before the birth of each of our babies because in none of those cases did we know that labor would begin so soon; but I'm happy that's how it turned out!  It's kind of a neat--albeit unplanned--tradition!  :)

~ Benjamin, yesterday, his first time in the bouncy seat that was given to us in 2002 by Debbie, a friend from our 1997 semester in Israel, and used for each of our children ~