The other week I had a fantastic time heading down to downtown Los Angeles.  A pleasant change from suburbia.  It was a full circle moment when I thought about how the family that the husband was from has known me pretty much since birth.  Granted, I haven’t seem them  quite possibly for decades.  (It was that kind of weekend, one where I seemingly had a blast from the past from every “era” of life thus far within 24 hours.)  Anyway, I loved hanging out with this family and happening to have my camera.  We played at the LACMA lampposts and then walked around the park surrounding the La Brea Tar Pits, making sure to miss the tar and enjoy the sunny Saturday morning just outside the Museum of Natural History.

Now, you’ll notice a few things here…first, this is an awesome family!  The wife told me that her and her husband were still crazy for each other, and they were, they are–and that makes all the difference.  So much fun, and you’ll see below!  And the entire’s family courageous, selfless love for baby G. will forever inspire me.  M. and Z. don’t even realize how awesome they are and how big their hearts are.  The entire family also takes to heart the command that Jesus gave to care for orphans, and they are doing that with hopes to fost-adopt.  Anyone who knows someone in that journey in CA, or is in that journey, knows the immense challenges of that hope.  In fact, just a few weeks after these images were taken that you see below, the state placed baby G. with his new permanent family– a beautiful/painful event.  BUT you’ll see that Baby G. lived his past 11-months with true, steady, selfless, joy-giving, life-infusing love.  I hope and pray that the W. family’s prayers for actual adoption are fulfilled with a new child soon, but in the meantime they are living the example of love and filling lives with transformational love.  I’m sure the house feels so empty in some ways right now, and so I hope these memories here and eventually these portraits will be a reminder of who their family was for this special time.

Update: More roller coaster rides, but suffice to say Baby G. is still with them, and as such the state wants images of just him removed…and so they are.

One final note, the awesome quilt you can see in some of the grass pictures was made by mom-extraordinaire, awesome artist and crafty woman, L.  You can check out her store here!