Thank you Barbara Jeans!

This post could also be entitled "How Time Flies"... but that felt too nondescript :)

Back in the fall of 2009, when Samuel was still very sick and we were still very cautious about taking George and Olivia out in public, our friends Kristen and Josh helped to make sure we got out of the house at least once per week (work and visits to the hospital not included).  Our tradition became Sunday brunch at a local Barbara Jeans restaurant, yum!

The staff was wonderful and got to know our story, and it was just a great time for us to feel somewhat normal during a very stressful time in our lives...

Picture from November, '09, Olivia and George with Kristen and Josh - the tradition was in full swing!

When Samuel came home, we kept up the tradition for a while with take-out... in fact, on one particularly stressful Sunday morning when we had to put Samuel on a helicopter back to the hospital, my take-out breakfast was reheated for me as I packed a to-go bag and got ready to get on the road (parents can't fly with the kids, bummer)... unfortunately we were all a little frazzled and the styrofoam take out box got reheated too, ha!

Of course, eventually the tradition went away... then I saw in the paper this week that Barbara Jeans was closing its doors.  We had to make one last breakfast trip!

As we sat and ate, we reminisced about the early days of our tradition, the craziness that was our life during those days, how far we've come, how wonderful it was to have Samuel with us... and of course the kids wanted to know all about themselves during those early trips - what they ate, where they sat, even what they wore.  Although it's strange, even though that was four years ago, the four adults haven't aged a bit ;)

How funny, I thought this would be a 3-picture and 2-line post... it's pretty awesome the memories that seemingly simple things like breakfast can carry.