good day sunshine

I'm wondering if 80 degrees and sunshine makes any weekend amazing or if it was just good timing. ;)

We had our first, what I'm calling pseudo, foster care stint this past weekend.  Not a placement of our own, but providing a few days of respite for a fellow resource family who's had three kids for the past ten months. [Respite care, fyi, is when a family providing foster care needs a break or "time off" from caring for the children they have in their home... it is often used in instances with very dependent or difficult children whose caregivers need a break or also if the caregiver needs to travel or vacation without the foster children in their home, etc.]
We were only taking the youngest one of the three (the other two went to their grandparents house for the weekend, but the youngest does not share relation to this set of grandparents) and all I knew going into the situation was that he was 18 months old.  I didn't know how long he'd been in care, how long he'd been with this family, if it was a 'NEED a break' situation or just a relaxed weekend thing.  So for all I knew, we could be stepping into a wild and crazy weekend!  Thankfully, the whole three days were amazing.  Absolute best case scenario.  We had lots of fun and he was the sweetest little boy in the world.  Seriously, So. Good.  He slept 11-12 hours a night, ate like a champ, and had a fun fun fun personality.   And the biggest blue eyes I've seen on a kid ever.
Ryan kept asking, "are you sure they don't just want to leave him here? Cuz we'll keep him!!"

Little Mr P tagged along with us bright and early to the baseball fields for practice Saturday where we played ball and hung out on the playground, but mostly just spent the morning walking around wanting to follow either Sawyer or Clementine around the whole time. :)

Despite the fact that it looks like Ryan's keeping the dog in check while P's petting her (random awkward snapshot moment!), Tiny loved this little guy and followed him around everywhere in our house like she was his little nanny herself.  Of course, that could have something to do with the fact that he liked to share his snacks and meals with her... :)







The kids loved having our little buddy here and were so eager to help, it was awesome!  We went out to lunch after church on Sunday as an extra fun 'thank you' for our kids and such a great weekend.  And whad'ya know, this kid was an absolute peach at the restaurant too, despite being hungry and sleepy!  After lunch we took a nice little drive in the beautiful weather and came home to nap before P's (foster)Mama came and picked him up that afternoon and we said our goodbyes.

To cap off our perfectly sunshiney weekend, we had just enough time after P left to jump in the car and hit the tail end of Sonic's happy hour to grab slushes and the four of us took the puppy to her first Dog Park experience. :)  There's a playground next door where the kids mostly hung out, and a great little creek (although not so little right now with all the storms we've had lately, but I'm sure it's a fun little creek in the summer!) down below the fenced dog areas, so I think it'll become a regular hang out spot for us.  Clementine loved it... they have the bark park sectioned off so there's separate areas for small dogs and big dogs.  Which is good because the way some of the big dogs run around, those little dogs would be trampled!!  Even the beagle sized dogs were having trouble keeping out of the way sometimes!  Clementine met another big boy Great Dane (a 165lb harlequin) and another Dane/maybe greyhound? mix (tall, skinny thing, but with a hound/great danish face) and even being on the "big dog" side, other than those two she was the tallest pooch there.  At not quite six months old. Ha!  But she had a blast tearing around the place with them.  And learning her manners with a pack of dogs.  And learning to drink from the dog drinking fountain (that the 165lb boy was afraid of!!).

Mmmm... I could take a few dozen more of these sunny 80/85° weekends!!