We write to taste life twice

I am absolutely ecstatic to announce the birth of my niece:

Eva Jenet England (There's an accent over one of those e's in Jenet - it's French)

Born sometime after 6 pm on 11/7/07 at the US Naval Hospital, Guam (so yes, she was born early in the day for me here in Germany and for my mother in Ohio).

Brown hair, blue eyes, good set of lungs (she gets that from me...hehe). Mom talked to my brother while he was in the room with Cristine and the baby and she could hear Eva crying in the background.

She weighed about 7.5 pounds. (I use weights that weigh more than that!)

Pictures forthcoming.

As to why my brother didn't call...he had no explanation, really. Everyone was tired. He was thrilled that he got to deliver the baby. When Cristine got to her final push, he was allowed to go around and pull Eva out into the world.

I congratulated my Mom, who is now Nanna, on her first granddaughter. She congratulated me on my first niece.

Chocolate cigars for everyone! ;)

(Oh, and for once, I WAS NOT THE LAST TO KNOW! Mom had 2 other phone calls to make after she called me. Hehe.)

Happy Halloween to all!! Lance and I have a party to go to tonight, so hopefully our jetlag won't be too bad. I was in bed (or air mattress, I should say) around 9:15 last night, and I fell asleep almost instantly. And I actually slept through the night, except for when I got up once to use the bathroom. How weird. Usually my jetlag has me up wandering the house in the wee hours of the morning. But I was asleep until our alarm went off at 7.

So now we're waiting for Schinnen to come with some loaner furniture. They are scheduled to come anywhere between 8 AM and 5 PM. We are not pleased about this.

But I've used this opportunity to tidy up the house a bit, and because the spiders are getting out of control outside the front door, I went out with a can of Raid and a broom. I killed at least 6 of them that had built webs around the front door.

Oh, and I heard from my brother...Eva is scheduled to be born on November 9th by c-section, provided she doesn't get herself into the proper birthing position by then. My brother and his wife wisely decided not to let the doctor turn Eva over, because it would cause Cristine considerable pain and there are risks to the baby. And there is only a 65% chance of it actually working anyway. So they'll keep their fingers crossed and hope that she gets out of breach position so that Cristine can give birth naturally, or they'll do the c-section a week from Friday. Wow...it's all happening so fast! It doesn't seem like all that long ago that I found out they were expecting!

Anyway...I have things I've wanted to post about for awhile and haven't had the chance to...

First off, I already found a cute table for the kitchen at our new house. The McChord base exchange is selling it for $199.99. I just have to hope they still have it in stock when I want to buy it...or that they can at least order it, in which case, I would have to wait 6-8 weeks for it to arrive.

And Lance found similar looking bar chairs for the breakfast bar at Home Depot. So it won't be an exactly matched set, but it will be coordinated, which is just fine.

Now...books!

I read The Other Boleyn Girl almost in its entirety during the flight to Seattle. It's about 750 pages and I read at least 600. Excellent book! Obviously a page-turner. On the way back here to Germany, I read Water for Elephants...another fabulous book. That's our book club selection for November and I honestly hadn't expected to like it since it's so far removed from what I normally read. But it was really really outstanding.

YAY! Schinnen is here! Furniture!!

Which means that I will be back later with pictures! We need a coffee table so we can get my computer set up. Lance's laptop is not the best place for me to upload photos, since he doesn't have Photoshop.

Anyway, I have missed you all and I haven't been able to keep up with you for almost 2 weeks now. Please direct me to any recent news in comments.

I'M GETTING A NIECE!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH MY GOD....I'M GETTING A NIECE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*flail*

(They think they are going to name her Eva Lilliana).

And dammit...WHY CAN'T I GET A HOLD OF LANCE WHEN I HAVE GOOD NEWS?? GAAAAAAAAAAAAH! It's his niece too, after all.