Catching up

Heading to the birthday dinner

Here’s a picture from my birthday—we’re dressed to go to dinner and I’m wearing one of the dresses I made.

My cake

And here’s a picture of my birthday cake. Kent told them the name to put on the cake and he said there was a pause and they asked if I used the whole name. I think maybe the decorator started to spell my name incorrectly because you can see a bit of a bobble in the script. I’m sure it was very hard to get all nine letters on that cake!






Smithfield got a dusting of snow late Saturday afternoon and this is a picture of Alison getting ready to run, run, run in it. The next picture is Eliot at the door watching her. Pretty cute, huh.

Alison has gotten old enough that she understands when someone is leaving. Yesterday after lunch, she walked toward me and I could see she was tearing up and wanted me to hold her. I picked her up and she told me in a tiny sad voice that she didn’t want me to leave. Awww that broke my heart.


All in all, I had a really fantastic visit. I love seeing Ben and Jen and the kids and even more, I love it that they invited Kent and me to see the ultrasound. I feel very fortunate to have family like this.

It's a . . .

Boy!

I’m in Virginia this week. Ben and Jen invited us to come for her ultrasound yesterday and we wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It’s amazing how much detail you can see in those scans today. Ben and Jen said the images were even clearer than they were two years ago with Eliot.

Ben apparently has natural skills at reading the images; he’s known the gender of each of the three babies just by looking at the image—before the tech says anything. That’s how it was yesterday. I looked over at him and he was grinning. The tech saw it too, and asked him if he knew. He said yes, you couldn’t miss it. She laughed and agreed. So grandson number two it is!

Alison wasn’t really interested in having another brother and had told Ben that if it’s a boy, “you just keep it to yourself, Daddy.” He’d already told her he would get her an American Girl doll if she wasn’t getting the sister she wanted. So on the way home, we stopped at Target to pick up a doll. Kent had to head to the airport after that so he didn’t get to see the kids open their presents.

Eliot was far more interested in the cookies and rolling around on the tissue paper with the cat than he was in the toys.

C is for cookie!

And cat!