What a Beautiful Family You Have!

My husband and I took our children and foster baby girl to the river for the weekend.  Dear friends of ours have a beautiful vacation home right on the river, and offered it to us, free of charge.  They knew we had not been able to take a vacation this summer because we had been caring for Cutie Patootie and Sweet Pea.  Since Cutie Patootie was sent to live with her grandparents, we jumped at the chance to go. (much less chaos in the group.)  Anyway, we had a great time.  Saturday, Big Daddy and the boys went down the river in big inter tubes.  They had a blast.  Princess, Sweet Pea and I waited on the shore for them, and a light rain had started.
 They all showered, and we headed out to dinner at a local restaurant.  It was crowded, but we managed to get a table for 7 fairly quickly.  I noticed what looked like a wealthier retired couple sitting next to us.  They were dressed very nicely, and drinking wine from fancy glasses.  Here sat me, with my frizzy hair from the rain, no makeup, and my crew~all of us in "play clothes" because we were at the river.  The couple kept looking at us and talking in low voices.  I cringed to myself, thinking they probably wished all these children were not seated right next to them.
So, to my surprise, when we left, the couple stopped me (everyone had gone ahead of me).  The wife said, "Excuse me.  What a beautiful family you have."  "Thank you.", I told her, waiting for the BUT part to come.  It never came-she went on to say how impressed she was with our children, that they were so well behaved, and how you don't see big families anymore, and how much she loved seeing big families.  I told her thank you again and how blessed we feel to have a big family as well.  I did not go into the "We are foster parents shpiel (is that even a word?)"  or that we adopted through foster care.  I simply grinned from ear to ear as we walked to the car, happy that our family looked like it belonged together, knowing that we do. 
Now, Queen Mama is a BIG advocate of foster care and adoption through foster care and usually always tell curious people our story.  But, for this weekend, I just relished being a family...not a foster family, not an adoptive family, just a beautiful family...
Blessings to you and your beautiful family,
The Queen Mama
http://www.soylicious.com/candlequeen