A Wonderful Day

The morning after graduation, I had planned to go into the office. I had a boatload of work and only two days in which to do it before I left on vacation. Only thing is, I overslept. Instead of waking to the sound of an alarm in the dark, I work up momentarily confused because it was light in the room. One quick glance at the clock confirmed that it was almost two hours past the time I should have gotten up.

Jumping out of bed, I resigned to the fact that I wouldn't be going in after all, instead it was plan B. I would work from home and head into the office the next day instead. Not exactly what I wanted to do, but that's the way it was going to have to be because I didn't want to waste precious minutes stuck in traffic.

I had just logged onto my computer with a steaming hot cup of coffee in my hand when my phone rang. It was Matthew. He was a little breathless, Ashley was finally in labor. "No need to rush", he said, "it'll be a while".  Since I hadn't taken a shower yet, I quickly emailed my boss and headed up to wake Brie and get cleaned up.

Just a short hour later, mom, Brie and I were getting into the car when I looked at my phone. There was a text from Matt that I had somehow missed. "Baby born at 8am. More info to follow".

The plan had been for us to drive to Palm Desert, pick up Max from the sitter and wait until we received the green light to go to the house. As far as I knew, the plan hadn't changed, but likely we wouldn't have to be waiting as long as we thought. Surprisingly knowing that the baby had been born made the drive seem less hectic.

We arrived at the sitter's in the middle of Max's nap. He seemed pensive, as though he knew instinctively something was up. After all, we had never picked him up from the sitter's before.

It was around 11am by the time we got Max in his car seat and since we were under strict orders not to come to the house until we were told otherwise, we decided to have lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Right as we were finishing up lunch, Matthew told us that we could come on over. 

Tina had just arrived and had our precious baby girl in her arms. She was perfect in every way. Ashley looked exhausted, but very happy. 

Matthew was the proud daddy. 

Max for the most part pretended as though the baby wasn't there. 

My biggest surprise came when they announced the baby's name... Aurora Debra. I could have cried, but I acted composed because Ashley's mom was there and I didn't want to make her feel bad. Aurora, what a beautiful, lovely name. Debra, what a beautiful, lovely surprise. 

We stayed for the whole day. I could have stayed for the whole weekend, but we were leaving on vacation on Sunday and I had work to finish up. So we enjoyed the evening light and some dinner before we left.

I never realized how pretty the light was in the afternoon at their apartment. 

It was a wonderful, wonderful day. Two wonderful, wonderful days in a row. I was so blessed. Still am.