Baby Update

I'm just letting you know that I added a few more photos to my existing web album of Baby Isabella's birth.

We are hoping that baby and mama will come home from the hospital tomorrow. Laura is making progress toward handling the pain from the C-section, and baby is making progress on learning how to breastfeed. Last night they had their first sleepless night due to baby crying. Well, I say "they," but by they I mean Laura and her mom, since Andrew slept here last night where he had lots of peace and quiet.

In other news, the honeymooners were supposed to come home from Cabo, Mexico today, but their flight was canceled, and they were unable to get on to a standby flight. So we think tomorrow they will instead get a direct flight to Houston and not come here to Dallas at all. Then they have to figure out a way to get up here next weekend for their Dallas reception a week from today. And I have to take David's car in to the shop AGAIN and try to get it all fixed before they get her next weekend.

I'm a Grandma!

Isabella Sophia is born

Click the above photo to see a web album.

Laura entered the hospital on Monday, June 23 at about midnight with elevated blood pressure. On Wednesday June 25 they induced labor, but that failed. So baby was born by C-section on Thursday June 26 at 6:14pm. We got to the hospital about an hour later and she seemed very alert. She has a big head and tiny lips and a soft little cry.

We thank God for her safe entry into this world!

The Grandmothers/Las Abuelitas

The other grandmother has arrived from the Dominican Republic, and now we all await baby's arrival. Since baby has shown no signs of wanting to leave her warm abode, the doctor is taking measures, starting tonight, to make her face the world. If all goes as planned, she should make her arrival tomorrow afternoon or evening.

Please pray with us for a safe delivery.

Travelling

Last night we arrived safely from our week in Seattle. It was a study in spacial intelligence to fit all those suitcases into Dave's hybrid SUV.

But we did manage to get them all to the airport in Seattle, and also to get them all back to Dallas. We took advantage of the fact that, since we "bought" our frequent flyer tickets many months ago, we got free baggage allowance. This enabled us to bring all of David and Sarah's wedding presents home for them for free. (Which they are going to be glad for once they get the bill for David's car repairs...)

Upon checking in these two beauties, the airline agent said, "Were these high school graduation presents?"

Baby David Got Married!

Hard to believe, but our baby is now a married man. He is now under new management, the joke was going around. (Or as Andrew put it after he got married, "Mom, I have a new boss now.")

We've been in the Seattle area since Tuesday, busy every day with wedding related activities. We've had a family reunion too since Gary's parents are here, my mom is here, Gary's sister and her two daughters were here, as well as fictive aunt Carol and second mom Janet. Also, several of David's high school friends came: Parvaneh, David, Drake, Julia, Caleb, Jesse, and Michael. We've been sleeping at the bride's father's house in Woodinville. In fact, we've basically taken over his house, and he's been kind enough to not mind.

Of course, we've been taking lots of photos this week and I've organized them into five albums linked below. Also, the professional photographer picked out his 13 favorite photos and put them in his blog.

Trip to Seattle and dinner at Maureen's

David's wedding rehearsal and dinner

Friday night pre-wedding dinner

David and Sarah's wedding

David and Sarah's wedding reception

Happy Father's Day!

Gary safely arrived from Kenya right on schedule this afternoon and the whole household went to DFW to meet him.

We stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings for an early dinner/late lunch so the dad and the dad to be could have wings while checking out the golf play.

My Baby Is Getting Married!

By the looks of my two sons, it is a wonder any woman would take them!

This photo was taken during breakfast this morning. David and Sarah arrived by car late last night and as soon as breakfast was over I drove them to the DFW airport to go to Seattle. We will follow on Tuesday.

David was already giving Sarah a hard time about wearing his new Groom hat.

We are praying they won't be too stressed out this coming week, but what are the chances of that?? Andrew's advice to David: this will be the worst week of your life, so shut your mouth and open your wallet. (I guess he remembers the week of stress before his wedding!)

In other news, on the way home from DFW Rachel got a call to work the rest of the mornng, so I took her directly to Sylvan and she arrive exactly at 9:30. Mom and I picked her up at noon, went out to eat at Bennigans, then did some shopping. Andrew and Laura are spending the day at a Lamaze class, getting ready for baby.

Headbands

I've finished my sewing for wedding stuff, so I made baby girl some headbands. Laura bought the colored bows and the grosgrain ribbon, and I sewed them. I hope they fit her--but if not, I can always adjust them. Baby will get the headbands, not the soda. :-)

My mom arrived safely at 7:30 this morning. We expect David and Sarah to arrive by car tonight and fly to Seattle tomorrow. Then Gary come in on Sunday and we all leave on Tuesday. That's 4 trips to the airport in 5 days. Yikes on the gas prices!

Update from Africa

I finally got an email from Gary who is in Kenya this week teaching a workshop on Language Documentation. He found the computer room and plugged his computer in long enough to send me a nice long letter telling about his eventless travels and the early part of the workshop. He's having to work hard to keep ahead of the students since this is the first time he's taught a workshop of this type.

In other news, our colleague Pam was kind enough to translate three documents that Laura and Andrew needed to proceed with Laura's green card application. That saved them a chunk of time and money. One more thing to check off the to-do list.

Rachel has a dentist appointment tomorrow before she goes to work. Her new house seems to be working out pretty well.

Andrew got the wood cut from the broken tree, and all the brush hauled away. Yay!

OK not much else for news.

It Must Be The Cat's Fault

When we got home from church a big branch of one of the trees in the back yard was down.

Happy Birthday, Rachel!

With all the baby and wedding stuff going on, I nearly forgot Rachel's birthday. And, sadly, I did not bake her a cake. But Andrew and Laura didn't let me forget altogether, so we took her to IHOP for a late breakfast. It is a good place to go when Gary is out of town, since he hates pancakes.

Andrew had the very good idea to buy Rachel a new set of tires for her little car, so we are splitting the cost of that. It is great to have her car for use when the van is busy with other things. We'll try to get them put on early next week.

Rachel has moved to her new location, not far away on a different street in our neighborhood. She is house sitting for 8 weeks and we can use the place for overflow sleeping if we need to. She will still eat most of her meals with us--after all, she doesn't want to miss out on any of the new baby excitement!

Speaking of new baby, the latest medical checkup was all good, and it looks like this will be a big baby. My good friend, baby nurse Janet from next door, spent 2.5 hours giving Andrew and Laura a private baby class since they've been unable to enroll in one at the hospital. Then today Andrew and Laura went to the hospital for an official tour to learn where to park, what the general routine will be, and all about the strict security protocols at the hospital.

I haven't heard anything, but Gary should be in Ruiru, Kenya by now to soon start his workshop on Language Documentation for a group of Bantu languages.

(50% of the photos I take of Andrew have his eyes closed.)

BBQ-Baby Shower Slideshow

Here is an embedded slideshow of our baby shower. Be sure to click the quote bubble on the left side so that the captions show up.

If your computer can't see the slide show, you can view it online here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/linda.simons/AndrewAndLauraSBabyShower