My niece, Ava...

...has arrived! I'm an aunt! Ava Louise Rinehart is already almost a week old, but you can't blame me for the lack of photos... that's the rest of my family's fault! My sister, Dale, and her husband, Joe, live in North Carolina, so when Dale went into labor (11:45 on Saturday night) my parents and grandparents (visiting from South Africa) drove down to be there for the birth. They missed it by a couple of hours, but promised to keep me updated with events as they unfolded. If updated means, "here's a postage stamp-sized picture of your sister's baby that we're sending to you from our camera phone" then they did a great job! It took several days and threats to call the police to have their grandparent licenses revoked, but I finally got some pictures. Here are some of my favorites:

Born on Sunday, December 9, 2007

at 9:48 a.m.

weighing in at 8.0 lbs (my dad won the bet!)

and measuring 20.75 inches!

Pern and I will be heading down to see the new family after the Holiday Program on Wednesday the 19th. We'll have a little pre-Christmas, Christmas and then head back up here for real Christmas with my 'rents and grand'rents. I am looking forward to seeing them and taking some pictures of my own!

Wasted time or time well-spent?

It snowed today. Not a lot, but enough to screw up traffic. It took me exactly two and a half hours to get to work this morning. Yes. Two. And. A. Half. Hours. !. I've been listening to "Citizen Girl," by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, so I was suitably entertained, but after the first hour, the whole stop and go traffic thing got a little old.

So the day flew by (helps when you get to work two hours late), and then Fairfax County schools cancelled after-school activities, which means we close at 3:00. So Keturah (my friend and boss) tells me to go home (it was 2:20), so I did. No arm-twisting needed. I got home in almost record time (the good, fast record, not the bad, painfully slow kind) and proceeded to do next to nothing for the rest of the afternoon. It's December. Everyone's most stressful month, right? Not for me. Not this year. I have decided to just chill out. My shopping is almost done and everything that has been bought has been wrapped. The school Holiday Program is under control. I'm good. No stress here.

So after watching Oprah, playing around with photoshop, cooking dinner, and basically doing nothing, I started thinking about all the things I could have done with my "extra" time this afternoon. Then I stopped. December is full enough.... no need to add more clutter to the chaos.

Check back in at the end of the month to see if my "life is good - no stress here!" mantra has held up. I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It's Christmas Dog!!

Hey Dale! I've got one, too!! It's not Chrismas without Christmas Dog! Rattiest ornament on the tree, but I can't start the holidays without him!