Our baby is here!

Yes. Little Violet Faith Loraine was born on July 14th. She's beautiful and perfect and a very sweet baby.

And even though she didn't come by my self-imposed deadline, I felt fabulous and was able to go to Montana to my family reunion, my great grandma's burial, and a baptism. The whole weekend was everything I dreamed. Well, maybe not so much the baptism. But it was beautiful.

It was really quite funny actually. All day on Saturday the two older sisters played hard--they even went to a parade. And then they didn't go to bed until late. So an 8:30am church service wasn't exactly something they were rested up for.

The baptism took place right after the first hymn. The pastor obviously has young children and I was thankful for that. But, that certainly didn't save us from the tired children.

Now this church was packed with mostly my aunts and uncles and a few cousins (It's really a tiny church--it holds maybe 100 people if it's at capacity). And the majority of the remaining members of the congregation have basically known me since I was born, or shortly thereafter. This was comforting, even to this mama who has come to realize that nothing my children have done or will do is out of the ordinary.

Calla, the two-year-old, made it through the first couple minutes, and then decided she wanted something. She was at the point where if she didn't get it BEFORE she asked, she would melt into a sobbing, wailing mess. And she did. Daddy was holding the baby, so I tried to pick Calla up. That was obviously wrong. So I put her down. That was obviously wrong, too. So I just let her cry at my feet and went back to listening to Pastor.

Since I'd given up all hope of calming her, I got to focus on the baptism of our little Violet. I didn't want to miss that part since that's one of the reasons we had dragged our family 10 hours across the country in the first place. Violet slept through the whole thing and I got a little teary. It's amazing what you can tune out when you have to.

Then we came to the Exhortation to Parents part--where the pastor basically askes if we intend to bring Violet up in the faith. By now Calla had started to calm down some. And then her big sister bumped her. Oh gosh. The world was ending yet again. So I gently asked Grace to move over to the other side of daddy so she wouldn't 'accidentally' bump Calla. But Grace didn't want to stand by the pastor and just moved between her daddy and me. But in the process she stepped on Calla's babies that were on the floor.

And off Calla went again.

And then Pastor says, "If so, answer: Yes, and we ask God to help us.

What else could we do but just stand there with our angelic sleeping baby, our tired four-year-old who wasn't feeling like she wanted to cooperate, and our screaming two-year-old, but laugh?

And laugh we did--in front of God and everyone.

"Yes, and we ask God to help us!" Everyone else was laughing, too. That was comforting--especially since I knew that they all could relate on one level or another.

On the way out Pastor commented that our "Yes, and we ask God to help us," was the most sincere he had ever heard. I believe him.

(The last picture is of our beautiful girls and their beautiful little cousin. Grandma made all their dresses. )