Country Mouse in a City House: BILLIONS OF CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, not billions. Fewer than ten. Between 6 and 9. It's hard to count them when they're all running around like adorable little juggernauts. The San Francisco Mennonite church is experiencing exactly the opposite of pretty much every other Mennonite church I've ever been to. Rather than being full to the brim of adorable old people with big glasses and quavery voices, our church is full to the brim with young people, particularly young adults between 20 and 30 and small children. It's really the best thing ever.

As I've mentioned before, the FMCSF people living in the East Bay (Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, etc) have a long-standing tradition (maybe not, I've been here for less than a year, it could have started 12 months ago and I wouldn't know any different) of getting together at one or the other of their houses for supper. Just supper, just an hour and a half or so of eating together and letting their children run around and scream and play with each other's toys. They also play fun-sounding made-up games, like “Super Sneaky Spies” that I'm really jealous of. All my sister and I ever played when we were that age was “Meet,” a game in which we ran in circles around the house and screamed loudly whenever we crashed into each other. It was super fun back then.

This week's supper club was in Oakland, at a park overlooking Lake Merritt. Grillmaster Dave and his wife Heidi were hosting a BBQ. We had cheeseburgers, watermelon, chips, beer, and croquet. Also grilled strips of red bell pepper, which at first glance looked enticingly like bacon, to which Dave replied “.... Yeah... this is the Bay... not Kansas...” I'm just going to fill up the rest of this post with pictures of everyone's kids, because they are seriously the most adorable kids I've ever met.