Important Day: December 7

Today was quite an important day in our family. December 7 is the anniversary of the attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, a turning point not only in American history but also in our family as my mom's father was on a destroyer just outside the harbor on that fateful morning. The crew of the USS Ward spotted, fired at, and sunk a Japanese submarine just outside Pearl Harbor, a claim that was proven when the sunken sub was discovered on the ocean floor a few years ago. Then precisely four years after Pearl Harbor, the USS Ward was hit by a kamikaze in the Leyte Gulf, and my grandfather, the captain at the time, managed to safely evacuate all his men before the Ward sunk. So December 7 has always been important for my family.

This day became even more important when our fifth child (fourth living) was born on December 7, and we gave him the same middle name as my grandfather. So today we celebrate B's 8th birthday with gluten-free pancakes for breakfast and fun presents to open:



We left the house just after nine this morning through heavy rain to attend Friday chapel as usual. It was a special day at Alpine Anglican as well: the 25th anniversary of Father Acker's ordination. We celebrated with Holy Communion and a little party afterwards with cranberry bread and hot chocolate, along with a photo taken by T:



After church and a quick trip to the chiropractor for me, we drove to Balboa Park. B had asked to go to the zoo today, but with quite a rainstorm blowing through, we decided on Plan B: the Natural History Museum where we met my mom for an enjoyable and educational morning. After perusing the museum exhibits for a while, we headed to the Cafe Prado restaurant for a birthday lunch where I snapped this photo of the birthday boy (wearing our family's traditional birthday hat) and my mom:



Tonight is "Christmas on the Prado" (now called "December Nights" to be perfectly P.C.) at the park, so we stopped for a quick picture on the Prado before the crowds descend to buy hot chestnuts and kettle corn and wander through all the museums for free. It can be fun, but the crowds are crazy and a little fierce.



So we came home to allow B to play with his Legos and Bionicle dart gun, to eat pizza and chocolate chip ice cream with our birthday boy. I still can't believe that our youngest is already eight years old! What happened to my babies? My toddlers? I'm teaching the last kiddo to read. The years simply fly by ... and today is just chock full of reminders: the celebration of Father Acker's ordination twenty-five years ago (which he mentioned as "flying by" today), the celebration of B's eighth year of life, and also this sixty-sixth anniversary of Pearl Harbor.