Sarah’s long-overdue birthday post

So, here we are on the eve … no - make that the early morning hours of Grant’s 4th birthday*, and I suppose I should update the blog with Sarah’s 10th birthday post.  It has been just about a month since her birthday, so this post has been percolating long enough (more like sitting on the back burner long enough, but you get the idea).

Sarah’s Birth Story

First, her birth story.  There are certain details about each child’s birth which remain clear to all moms, even years later.  For Sarah, I remember having a doctor appointment the day before she was born.  Her due date was May 2, but my OB mentioned the possibility of induction, because she thought it would be more helpful for planning childcare for Rachel, Courtney & Erica.  Well, of course childcare decisions are much easier when there’s is a scheduled date, but I wasn’t interested in induction just for the sake of convenience. My OB decided to try a natural induction method that sometimes brings on labor (moms know what I’m talking about here) and after that, I headed home.  About an hour later, I begin feeling what I suspected might be the beginning of labor.  This shifted me into high-nesting mode and before I knew it, I was flying through our local Aldi’s, grabbing groceries left and right, unloading the cart, loading the cart, loading the car, unloading the car, etc., etc. I somehow made it through the evening routine and by 9:00 that evening, noticed more regular contractions. Despite all the symptoms (and having gone through this process three times already), I found myself still wondering after several hours if it was true labor. I talked to my cousin, who was doubtful since my water hadn’t broke yet (incidentally, out of 8 births, my water broke on its own only once), but things continued and I became more convinced.  We decided around 11 pm to head to the hospital. 
After arriving around midnight, the nurses checked me in, checked me, and paged my doctor.  I think by this time, it was about 3:00 am.  My doctor, Dr. Norman (who had earned the nickname “Stormin’ Norman” by the nurses) had arrived and … well, let’s just say she’s probably not a night owl.  :-D  After checking me, then breaking my water, she left to try to catch a few more winks (I assume) before her presence in the delivery room was mandatory.  By around 4:25, she was called back in and we were ready to go.
From this point on, what I distinctly remember thinking is “Why is this taking so long?” The first three deliveries had gotten progressively quicker, and I think I was expecting the same trend with #4 – at least I’m sure I was hoping that would be the case.  After 20 minutes of pushing, Sarah finally made her grand entrance – face up – much to the surprise of my OB.  “So that’s what took so long!” she said.  Beautiful Sarah Rebecca was born at 4:48 am on April 24, 2002.  She weighed 6 lbs. 15 oz. – the exact same weight as her big sister, Erica.

Sarah’s 10th Birthday

Our birthday celebrations typically feature a nice meal, completely chosen by the birthday child (even down to the beverage).  Grandma and Grandpa Griffin are the much-anticipated guests and they are seated on either side of the birthday child at the dinner table. After a nice meal, we move on to the cake, then the gifts.  Sometimes, we watch a video of the birthday child’s birth day, and if the weather is cooperative, we almost always take a leisurely walk.  For tenth birthdays, in addition to our usual cherished birthday traditions, we have the “friend birthday” party.  Sarah’s birthday guests included 4 cousins and 1 friend.  We also had 2 daughters of some friends who had gone out of town for a couple of nights.  The boys were highly outnumbered! 
The day before the party, Rachel, Courtney & Erica put their creative heads together and came up with a really fun treasure hunt that had the girls putting together handmade puzzles to find out where the next clue was located. The girls also spent time running around outside and playing games, since it was a beautiful, sunny day.
After most of the guests had left, the kids spent the rest of their time wrapping up production of a new story they wrote and filmed which was called “The Secret of the Violin.” They did a very good job on it!  Plus, it was a great way for them to occupy their time, especially on Friday (the day before the party) since it rained quite a bit and they were even able to work the the rain into part of the storyline.
This has been an exciting year for Sarah as she has been enjoying her first year of ballet lessons, and doing very well.  She has also blossomed into an independent reader, most recently enjoying a book in the Elsie Dinsmore series.  We love her very much and look forward to what God has in store for her!

Visiting some friends' dairy farm in the summer of 2005 (Sarah was 3)

This is a classic Sarah toddler pose:  left thumb in mouth, right hand rubbing ear.  :-)

I've always loved this picture of Sarah (even though she looks sad) - her eyes look so beautiful!  She was warming up in the van after an unsuccessful first attempt at sledding.  :-)

I love these 3 pictures! We had them taken at Celebrity Kids when Sarah was 21 months old.  In the middle picture, she is demonstrating her "funny face." 

Sarah holding baby sister Brooke in January 2004.

Smelling a tulip at Grandma and Grandpa's house in the Spring of 2005.

In the backyard at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

This was from Summer 2008, during the Olympic Games.  Sarah was inspired and came up with this gymnast's outfit, complete with gold medal, flowers and American flag. 

Sarah and cousin Ellie

This was taken when Sarah was 5.  She was the flower girl in a dear friend's wedding.

Sarah dressed as Charlie Bates in our 2009 production of Oliver Twist.

Standing in front of cousin Sophia at ballet. 

Virginia Beach

Spring 2011

I'm honestly not sure where this was taken.  Hopefully far, far away from our house.

Sarah and cousin Cameron in 2011.

* Full disclosure here:  let the record show that I actually didn't publish this post (needed to add the pictures) until the wee hours of the day after Grant's birthday.  Which makes it ... May 24th .. which is ... exactly one month after Sarah's April 24th birthday!  Um, yeah, I planned it that way.  ;-)

The Boys of Summer

I had a lot of fun this year getting the boys’ Easter outfits.  I imagined both of them sporting matching newsboy caps and lo and behold, I was able to find 2 that matched in their sizes at Children’s Place!  The icing on the cake was that they were on sale for $5.00!  I couldn’t get out my wallet fast enough.  :-)

We started ooohing and aahhhing the moment we tried them on the boys that night (still feels weird to write and say “boys” :-)  They were absolutely adorable!  But with Trent being a tender 17 months old, I was worried he wouldn’t oblige us and wear the hat on Easter.  So, we put the hat on him on Saturday to desensitize him to it before the big day. 

I had one of the girls take him outside to play so he would be distracted and hopefully forget about the hat, and it worked!  A little while later, I looked out the kitchen window and spotted him standing on our front path holding an old baseball.  The effect of the hat and the baseball immediately brought to mind the baseball players of the 1920s.  His pants were even pulled up a little, making it look like he had knickers on!  My hands were soapy wet and I was in the middle of meal prep, so I told Courtney to grab the camera and get whatever shots she could of him.  It was in the early evening and a little overcast, so the light was in our favor (always a bonus!).  Courtney ended up having some good ideas for shots, and we ended up having quite a few very sweet pictures of our little guy.

and my favorite …

The Punch Bowl Fiasco

Despite the fact that her birthday is on April Fool’s Day, Rachel’s birthdays have been typical birthday celebrations around here.  We can usually count on my Dad for a practical joke or two, but other than that, it’s the usual birthday merriment.  OK, there was that one year that I had to make her birthday cake three times before I got it right, but it did turn out perfectly … eventually.  This year was different.  Well, for the most part, it was a typical, lovely birthday celebration.  The food was good, the cake was tasty (Texas Sheet Cake – hard to mess that one up), the weather was gorgeous.

Then there were the gifts. 

My parents take gift-giving very seriously. It is very important to them that they pick out gifts that will be the most meaningful to their grandchildren.  I mean, they really labor over this – going the extra mile (often literally) to find just that perfect gift.  For birthdays, they usually bring several gifts for the birthday child, and there is always one extra special gift, and it’s usually the biggest one.  This year was no different (although they did get a very nice gift in a tiny box – a beautiful necklace).  The biggest gift this year was also a very heavy gift.  Courtney happened to be passing out the gifts, and she could barely lift this one off the entertainment center and hand it to Rachel. 

It ended up being a beautiful antique punch bowl and punch cups. A strange gift for a 16-year-old? Not in this family.  :-)  Most of the gifts are age-appropriate, intended to be used, played with, enjoyed while their grandchildren are still children, which grandparents especially know is a fleeting time.  But there is often a keepsake gift; one that is intended to be a treasure, an heirloom, that will be enjoyed in future years, being passed down for future generations.  That’s what my parents had in mind when they spotted this punch bowl at an antique store. Not only is it a beautiful punch bowl, but is nearly identical (if not identical) to a punch bowl that my parents have and use on special occasions, complete with a removable pedestal, and 12 matching punch glasses. 

So, they bought this punch bowl two years ago, with the intention of giving it to Rachel on her 16th birthday. And they’re explaining all this to Rachel as she opens the gift and carefully takes out a couple of individually-wrapped punch glass to admire.  Again, the box is heavy, it’s contents are fragile, so Rachel decides to leave the rest of the items in the box. Not wanting Courtney to have to hoist the box back up onto the entertainment center, but knowing that’s the safest place for the box, I jumped up to help.

That’s when this happened:

Shock.  Horror.  It seemed to happen in slow motion, yet too fast for me to do anything about. I was absolutely certain -- I just knew -- the whole box would be nothing but bits of shattered glass.  I’ll never forget that sound.  The sound of all that antique glass. And my saintly mother saying, almost immediately, “Honey, it can be replaced. I’ve got extras of that same glass” (even when her kids are all grown up, she’s there trying to soften the blows :-) And then, when the impossible happened … out of all that, we lost only one punch glass?!!  It was a combination of absolute disbelief, relief, elation, and … hilarity at the whole thing.  To go from happy birthday celebrating, to the oohs and ahhhs over a very special gift, complete with a story of how they found it, to watching the whole thing come crashing down in a matter of about one minute.  I just lost it.  I think I laughed for about 3 minutes straight, with my rock solid husband taping and laughing the whole time (the video was edited to shorten that.  :-)  So, to recap, we went from this:

to this:

And believe it or not, Rachel said it was the absolute highlight of her birthday and she wanted as many people as possible to see her graceful mother in action.  So, here it is!  Happy Birthday, Rachel!  May future generations enjoy many delicious glasses of punch from this punch bowl, while they laugh at the crazy story of how it became yours!

 

P.S.  See the punch bowl on the entertainment center in the background?  It’s still there, 5 days later.  I think everyone is scared to move it.  I’m not touching it.

Happy Sweet Sixteen to Rachel!

Just a mere 4 days since we celebrated Rachel’s 16th birthday and I’m already composing her birthday post! This is the earliest I’ve ever been late! :-D I doubt I would be doing this if it was a typical Thursday, but this week is Spring Break, which means no schoolwork, no online classes, and no ballet lessons in the evening. So it’s been a little easier to carve out time for doing this.

Rachel’s Birth Story

For Rachel, I’m going to continue the tradition I started this year of writing out each birthday child’s birth story.  My due date with Rachel was April 14th, 1996.  When my brother-in-law found out my due date, he laughed and said “I hope the baby doesn’t come on April Fool’s Day!” My response was “I hope so!  That will mean she’s 2 weeks early!” Of course, I didn’t actually believe she’d come early. In my naïve mind, all first babies were overdue. Plus, according to Mom I was overdue by 6 days, so I figured my own babies would be, too.

So, fast forward to the wee hours of April 1st.  I woke up in the middle of the night with a contraction that didn’t go away when I walked around.  Around 6:00 am, I excitedly woke Mick up and we got everything ready to go. After an examination at the doctor’s office, I was told to go back home.  “The baby could come today, the baby could come in a week.”  The ride back home was much more subdued and my contractions quieted down and eventually stopped.  We had lunch, Mick updated his Final Four brackets, we took a nap.  When I woke up in the early afternoon, the contractions were back, stronger and closer.  Not wanting to be sent back home, we decided to wait until they were consistently 5 minutes apart.  When that happened around 3:00, we headed back down, and this time drove straight to the hospital. 

Things progressed quickly at that point. Once I was settled in and got comfortable, we decided to call Mom and Dad. That’s one of the moments we love to rehash on Rachel’s birthday each year.  It went something like this:

Dad:  “Hello.”

Me:  “Hi, Dad!  I’m at the hospital!”

Dad:  “What?!!  You ARE?!!”  (sounds of Mom gasping in the background)

Me:  “APRIL FOOLS!!”

Dad:  “Hey!!!  Awwwwwww!!!” (sounds of Mom deflating in the background)

Me:  “Just kidding!  I AM at the hospital!!”

Dad:  “You are?!!!”  (sounds of Mom fainting in the background)

So, they headed over to the hospital (breaking several speed limits, no doubt) and Kelly, Glenn and 8-week-old Luke came, as did Heather, Chuck and his friend from South Africa, Alvin. Jennifer and Steve were vacationing and Minda and Mario were living in Alabama at that time.

So, back in the labor and delivery room, there was lots of excitement.  A few random details I remember:

• From the heart rate, the nurses were all predicting a boy.
• Initially, Rachel tried to enter this world face up, but was successfully turned by my doctor.

Finally, at 8:14 pm, after 45 minutes of pushing, we had our first baby:  a girl!  Beautiful, delicate 6 lbs. 7 oz. with a little bit of very dark hair and very dark eyes that rarely blinked!

Rachel’s 16th birthday

The birthday meals around here are a big deal.  The kids all take great delight throughout the year in dreaming about and planning their birthday meals, oftentimes changing their minds several times before the actual day.  Rachel’s decision was an easy one:  Spaghetti.  Her favorite food is Italian.  So, we had spaghetti, homemade Italian bread, fruit slush, and chocolate milk – all her favorites!  Grandma and Grandpa came and were seated on either side of the birthday girl, as is also our custom.  The birthday cake was Texas Sheet Cake.  After opening gifts, we were able to take advantage of the summer-like weather we’ve enjoyed this Spring and take a walk down to see our neighbor’s horses.

The most memorable part of Rachel’s birthday this year happened during the gift-opening.  It was dramatic.  It was hilarious.  There was rollicking laughter and even tears.  And best of all, there was a camcorder (steadily held by Mick and rolling the whole time) which captured the entire sequence of events.  Afterwards, Rachel said it was the highlight of her 16th birthday … and I’m sure they’ll never let me forget it.  :-D

It really deserves it’s own blog post, so I’ll finish this one up with pictures, first from Rachel’s birthday this year:

And now, some pictures through the years (I really do need to start scanning in all the older pictures I have!):

Happy Sweet 16, Rachel!