Bear died in a motorcyle accident over the holiday.
He was the father of two and a firefighter. Not much older than Timmy. How sad.
Mom said he wasn’t drinking and had his helmet on. Makes no sense. Don has been riding motorcycles since he was 4 years old.
This picture cracks me up.
Tim is a giant, Jasmine’s a lilliputian. He looks so happy. She looks intent on getting a little shut eye.
I snagged the photo from Tim’s mySpace page without permission. I am sure he doesn’t mind.
Awwwww. Cute as can be.
Last night, June 13, 2009, at 2:23 A.M. (EST), Jasmine Olivia Elhajj arrived, weighing 6 lbs 15 oz.
This morning I woke up to a slew of messages on my cell phone, all of them from Timmy. In the messages from last night, he sounded giddy and excited; in this morning’s, he sounded sleepy but pleased.
We spoke a few hours ago and he filled me in on some of the details. Carrie is doing fine after a long and difficult labor, which she handled like a trouper. Tim found watching his child come into the world to be a very emotional experience. Jasmine sounds like a peaceful little girl. She’s pink, with little to no hair, and a cute little dimple under her chin.
Timmy and Carrie went to the hospital last night. When we found out, there was much revelry here in Washington. But I called a few hours ago and it looks like they ended up getting sent back home. The due date is still a few weeks out, so I guess this is fine, except that I am excited and can’t wait for news of the birth.
When we got the call from Tim, we were all in a pizza parlor getting ready to eat after seeing Up (which is as fabulous as everyone is saying it is). This was Holly’s celebratory birthday dinner, even though her birthday was this past Friday. I thought we had an eventful weekend, with Holly’s birthday, a couple of Little League baseball games and a school production of the Wiz.
But think how eventful Timmy and Carrie’s weekend must have been, with a race up RT 1 to get to the hospital.
You said we could refinance the house and
lower our monthly. I was skeptical. No way
will they lower our rate. Turns out, happens
all the time.
You said we needed new kitchen appliances
and I gasped. How can we afford it? Now
we have the cheerful ring of the timer, the
smell of oven soft bread. One wonders why
we waited so long.
You said we ought to get a dog or maybe
some chickens. I sneezed into my hankie.
Allergies! And now I can’t imagine life
without my poop-rolling little buddy. And
those clucking birds are certainly
entertaining.
You said we ought to have a child.
This was in Yosemite, before we were
married. You said you’d raise the child on
your own, if I would just do my part. I
laughed. That’s when I fell in love with you.
I knew a girl like you’d take me places I’d
never been.
The low down at my house this weekend:
Lots of baseball, despite a sidelining injury.
A weekend of close games.
Finishing touches on the chicken coop.
Momma Carrie’s time is drawing near.
How exciting!
It started about three or four years ago: Holly suggested we raise chickens. I scoffed. But in the last year or so, Holly got Kennedy on board and now here we are with a chicken coop in the backyard.
When we first got the chicks at Easter, they were mighty cute. They were just two days old and would wander around in the tank under the heat lamp, occasionally nodding off and tilting over, like little junkies in the park.
Now they’ve more than quadrupled in size. Holly says some of them might get twice as big as they are now. The tank we’ve been keeping them in is too small. They squawk and whistle and battle one another.
Holly says they need the heat lamp for eight weeks—early June. Despite this, I built the coop over the last two weekends, and we’ve been putting them inside it during the day. I’m waiting for the material for the coop roof to be delivered, so for now there is no roof on the coop.
You have to hope a hawk doesn’t swoop down and grab one the peeps.
More pictures on flickr.
Tonight I find a Word file on my desktop named, “Kennedys the nicest.doc.” Sometimes the kids forget and log on to my desktop. No big deal.
I open the file and find the following pie chart that graphs the niceness quotient of my family:
If you can’t read the key, all you really need to know is that Kennedy is the big green piece. It’s an active pie chart, which I’m not even sure I know how to make.
If you look at the stats that drive the chart, Kennedy is a 2000 on the niceness scale, while Holly is a respectably close 1999. Aaron and I fared much worse.
Under the chart, the text reads:
“As you can see here, I am the nicest person here.”
I love that girl.
I love the scroll and pegbox of the cello next to Kennedy’s hair. More photos on flickr.
Present Tense 