Who doesn’t enjoy a nice beach trip every once in a while… a time of rest, relaxation and serenity while watching the waves roll in. That was the opposite of what happened on the beach trip that my family experienced this past weekend.

We are a very wide spread and well traveled family. My parents are missionaries to India and our cousins are missionaries to Portugal. The cousins from Portugal are home after being gone for four years on a foreign mission field, and we thought it would be a great time for us to plan a beach trip.

We figured that we would take the women and the children only. But our math was horribly off. When you start counting kids in ratio to moms, it will make your head spin, especially when one mom has five kids, and most others have three. When the smoke settled and we were sitting at the beach house on Wednesday night, there were 16 kids ranging in ages from 2 to 12, six moms and grandmas and two dads in a three bedroom house.

The anticipation leading up to this trip was gut wrenching. I kept making excuses as to why I shouldn’t go, just trying to get out of the chaos that we all knew was before us. But when we entered the house, it was so great to see our cousins, the Andrzejewski’s, whom we hadn’t seen in years. Kids change so much over smaller periods of time and it was so evident with getting to see these sweet babies. Their baby, Justice, was only 1 year old when they left and seeing him as a 5 year old was crazy. American culture is his second culture. This baby only knows Portugal, and by this point he was kind of ready to get back to his home.

When our car load of five kids and two moms drove up, we hugged for just a second and then it was time to figure out sleeping and eating arrangements. When there are 16 kids in a house, everyone just finds an open area of floor when it’s time for the lights to go out.

About 2 a.m. things were finally quieting down and we were ready to settle in for the night. The next morning we got up, had breakfast and headed to the beach. Since I have worked in a daycare before, I already knew the importance of keeping a head count, but there is nothing like keeping a head count on a small army while at the beach. We were all scared to blink, in fear that one baby would vanish and we might not notice for another five or ten minutes. I can’t even tell you how many times we yelled, “Come back this way; you’ve gone too far,” from the shore. We even had one of the scary little moments when you have to rescue the little ones from the overpowering waves.

But we also had some beach time that we will never forget. Like the moment that all of the babies were playing in the ocean at the same time with smiles on their faces. This is probably the only time in their lives that all of these kids will be able to be together like this and it was well worth every minute of it.

Sure there were tense moments, people parent differently that others and people do things differently, but all in all, family is the most important thing. We had a wonderful time catching up on each other’s lives and getting to spend some quality time with the ones we love the most. And if you’ve never served spaghetti and meatballs in an assembly line style, then you have never lived. We toasted enough garlic bread to keep the vampires away for years.

Once again, we come back to the conclusion that love for others is so vitally important in our lives. Stop today and thank God for putting your family in your life. They really do make life worth living.