Welcome to the world. Baby Girl

Catharine Beverly Jackson was born at 6:28 pm on November 22, 2018.  As I mentioned last week, she's the first November birthday in the Roy and Catharine Rasband family.  Elise had to endure a bit of a roller coaster as she had planned to go in to the hospital Tuesday morning and have the baby in due coarse, thus being home for Thanksgiving to celebrate it with us.  After her weekly appointment with the doctor, she was told to report to the hospital Tuesday evening at 6:00 pm.  Her cervix hadn't begun to thin and so she needed to do an all-nighter with some medication to jump start he process.  As 6:00 neared, she received a phone call and was told all the beds were full, so to wait for further notice.  Finally, around midnight, she was able to go with Andy to the hospital.  Her mother-in-law was in town, so she watched the boys until she had to leave the next morning.  

At least for me there was a silver lining in the delay--I arrived in time to join Elise and Andy in the delivery room (after a long day of travel from home.  We left Wednesday morning early, around 4:30 am), and watch Beverly come into the world.  I've never seen a baby being born from the vantage point of a spectator, and it was amazing.  In 1985, when Elise was born, Roy was in Atlanta working at a new job while I stayed behind until the baby came.  My mom was able to accompany me at the birth.  She told me how much it meant for her to be able to see a baby born, because when she had her babies, she wasn't aware enough to pay attention (and they had no mirrors).  Elise was the first girl, after two wonderful baby boys. Beverly followed the same pattern.

Unfortunately for Elise, the later arrival of the baby meant that she could not be home on Thanksgiving.  I don't understand why it's so hard to get out of the hospital here, because I went home with at least half my babies after 24 hours because we didn't have maternity insurance.  There was no way they were going to let Elise out of there until the baby had been there 24 hours and could have the necessary tests.  At least the baby was here and healthy and that made the disappointment about Thanksgiving pretty insignificant.

I didn't mention yet that the baby was 8 lbs. 10 oz. and 21" long. One of my first thoughts as she was born was that she had to be close to 9 lbs.  She would have easily met that mark had the labor not been induced as it was obvious that Elise's body would have carried Beverly for at least several more days.

We have so enjoyed being with Maverick and Max this week.  We brought Caitlyn along and she has been a huge help, taking over bathing Mav and getting him down for his naps.  It was obvious as I went through the pictures that she's developed a soft spot for this little boy.  She leaves to go back to Utah today so she won't miss any school.

As you can see from the pictures, Mav and

Max were pretty excited to see their

new little sister:

  

Elise, fully ready to come home with her Thanksgiving baby.
It took the nurses forever to check her out of the hospital on Friday.

We planned the Thanksgiving dinner for Friday around 1:30 but it was about 7 before we were able to get Elise and Beverly home so we could eat.  We were still able to enjoy the spirit of the Holiday in gratitude for our many blessings--our wonderful family, our membership in the church, our knowledge of the Savior... too many blessings to list.

At home (in Texas) with the boys:

No pictures this week

I have been trying not to eat out to much as it's not conducive to watching my weight.  However, this week I enjoyed three lunch dates.  Christine and Nan and I met at my house for lunch (I picked up the lunch at Plates and Palates).  We try and get together for our birthdays and we were way behind.  We had an enjoyable afternoon eating good food and visiting in a quiet atmosphere.  We have to catch Nan when we can because she travels so much lately. 
Tuesday, I went with my visiting teaching companion and two of our V.T. sisters.  We met for lunch at Iggy's.  I had the blackened salmon salad, which was a good choice.  The service was slow and there were very few people in the restaurant, but since we had plenty to talk about, it was fine.  It is fun to get to know the sisters in our new ward.  It takes time, but it's rewarding.  Our other sister works during the day, so we're going to have to figure out how to include her next time. 
On Thursday, I met Suzanne, Karen, and Leann--three friends from High School (and Junior High, and Elementary!).  We visit every three to four months.  Karen asked if any of us were thinking of future missions.  Suzanne's husband served in San Antonio as mission president a few years ago.  Her response was interesting.  She said she was not ready--yet.  She admitted that being on a mission in that capacity was difficult--and even a little hard on her marriage.  She said it was because while she is slow and deliberate in her decision making, her husband is quite the opposite, so it was hard to council together.  She wasn't sure how it would be to have him as her missionary companion--a 24/7 situation.  Karen said she might even be open to it, which surprised me.  She is far more liberal than I am, and, though "active", I'm not sure she's been back to the temple since her wedding.  Leann also said she would be willing.  She said her husband is a natural teacher and he'd love to do a proselyting mission, then she listed a few examples of things he could do that she'd be willing to do also (proselyting wasn't necessarily one of them).  I have thought about this also. Of course, Roy's not retired, and Caitlyn and Jennie are still at home.  It will be hard to leave my beautiful new home, but I'm definitely not opposed to it.  There are many things we could do without leaving the state.  In our stake conference today, we were told that the stake receives about 30 missionary assignments that they are meant to fill.  I guess they have had trouble filling the last 8 or 9 each year, until one of the men assigned to help fill the assignments offered to go to the various relief societies and priesthood quorums and let everyone know what assignments were available and what they each entailed.  After that, they had a much less difficult time getting those assignments filled.  They also announced that they have recently sent two mission presidents from our stake to Tempe, Arizona and Houston, Texas, and those presidents are looking for senior couples to help serve.  If Roy were retired, it might be fun to serve in Houston while Elise is there.  I know one of those two mission presidents from High School.  Spencer Hewlett.  He's a year younger than I and we were good friends back then. 
Thursday evening we had another invitation out for dinner.  Heeyoung and Jun invited us to their home for a delicious Korean dinner.  We stayed for a couple of hours and played with their kids, who seemed to love the interaction.  Roy rough-housed with the little boy, then Jun tried it also.  Heeyoung said, "Thank you for the inspiration to my husband," so maybe it's not something he's done before.  They are wonderful young people and I intend to have them over often while they are still in the states.  They said that they had plans to go to Hawaii for Christmas because they didn't want to stay here and be lonely.  I said I wouldn't have let them be lonely. 
Friday night we had the family over.  Matt couldn't make it because he was involved in one of Malouf's semi-annual sales.  Dan and family stayed home because of illness.  Everyone else in Utah was present.  We kept it simple, but it was delicious as usual.  Roy cooked his sauerkraut/sausage/chicken dish.  We haven't had it in forever.  We had Dan come and get food for his family.  He said Jieun loved the sauerkraut, and that she'd not had it before.  That means Roy probably hasn't cooked it for 10 years. 

On Saturday we got a lot accomplished during the day, and spent a nice evening at the Saturday evening session of Stake Conference.  It was short 1 1/2 hours by 10 or 15 minutes, which was nice.  Our meeting today also got out 15 minutes early.  We missed the last stake conference because we were out of town, so this was our first stake conference in this stake.  Apparently, it's the last stake conference for our leaders, they are to be released in April. The meeting last night was on giving more of ourselves, and the meeting today had several themes, since all of the presidency and the clerks gave their testimonies--also the clerk's wives. 

Happy Birthday to Beverly this week (hopefully on Tuesday, the 21st).  She will be the first of our family to fill a slot on the November calendar.  We are headed to Texas on Wednesday for Thanksgiving.  I will stay for over 2 weeks to help Elise. 

Caitlyn has an MRI tomorrow to see if her arthritis is active.  She's been struggling with pain this last month.  If she's inflamed, we'll change her medication.  If she's not inflamed, we'll have to be creative--probably get her back to a physical therapist, etc.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.  We'll miss all of you this year (except the Jackson's), but don't despair, next Thanksgiving will arrive before we can blink. 

Love to all!

Theater, etc.

We had a fun opportunity this week when our financial adviser, Kimball Doxey and his wife Terry invited us to go to the play Bundle of Trouble at the Hale Center Theater. Occasionally, they'll invite us as a thank you for our business, but they are also friends from the first ward we were in after we moved to Bountiful (while we were renting on Bountiful Blvd). This play, of course, was all the more fun since we had performed this play in 1993 or 1994 in our theater in Georgia.  The star, when we performed this in Georgia, was our own Elise.  At least she was the star as far as we were concerned.  the actual star is the father who carries the show.  She memorized lots of lines and had a ball practicing and performing in the play and interacting with the other actors.  The play was written by Ruth and Nathan Hale in their early days of running a theater.  The premise is a father, who has been separated from his wife and child for a number of years, is suddenly reunited when the wife needs a babysitter for a few weeks.  She drops the child off, and a bit of mild chaos ensues.  The father in the play completely breaks the "wall" (the rule where the actors pretend the audience isn't there), and involves the audience in what is going on.  This invites a lot of ad-lib, and makes the play a lot of fun.  In this case, the little girl was played by a kindergartner.  She did a pretty good job, but you could tell the difference between a five year-old taking the part, and a 7 year-old (Elise).  Of course, I'm not prejudice at all.

I also had the "opportunity" to accompany Caitlyn as she performed on her violin at her Young Women in Excellence.  She played a violin arrangement of "Did you think to Pray?"  The piano part was very challenging and I only had a few days to practice.  We made it through with only a few 😅 mistakes.  Even though I didn't play perfectly (Caitlyn did very well, by the way), I was still proud of myself for the attempt, because playing in public on the piano has always been difficult for me and I always manage to fumble no matter how hard I practice.  I got pretty good at performing with the primary the last few years, but playing a piece of this difficulty is another matter.

Gunnar invited me to grandparents day at school.  Their PTA is very smart--get the grandparents to come during the book fair to make extra money.  Grandma Lisa had gone with Gunnar to the book fair on a previous day and bought him a book, and then it was my turn.  We had a good time and Gunnar kept me entertained.  Hyeji told me later it had been her book fair that week.  I told her she should have invited me so she could've gotten a book out of it.  She said she already had tons of books.

The only pictures to share this week are of our sweet grandsons from Texas.  They had a day that got a cold 57 degrees, so they got to don their winter gear before going out to play.

Max and Mav

Max

Mav

Our Sunday evening is a lot quieter than normal.  It's nice once in a while to have time to study and write this letter, etc.  Of course, we miss everyone when we don't have them over.

Halloween, and Thanksgiving! (And some news)

 Halloween:  We ate a delicious supper of chicken noodle soup in a bread bowl at Adrienne's house, and then came home to chill and give out candy.  We had quite a few trick or treators, but of course, these were our favorites:

Grandpa with our trick or treators

Ollie, Gunnar and Roy

Dojin discovered that he likes chocolate--a lot!

Ruby as Minnie Mouse (wasn't she princess Sophia just last week?)

Hyeji, Dojin, Doyeon and Yuna

Adrienne, Caitlyn, Nan, and I went to Charlotte's on Monday and enjoyed a delicious Witches Tea.  Christine met us there.  I didn't take any pictures, but the food was delicious, as usual, and dad and I enjoyed a home-made caramel apple later that Char had made as a party favor. She goes all out.

Saturday night we took Caitlyn and went to see Peter Christensen in his play, "And then there were None."  Peter did a good job, he was probably the best actor in the play.  I saw a couple of High School Friends there--Janine Simons Craeger (taking tickets and otherwise helping out) and Ken Hadlock (acting).  He was in my ward growing up, as well as a classmate.  We were also able to meet Jacob's fiance, Brianna.

Sunday evening we had Thanksgiving dinner for our family since we will be spending Thanksgiving this year with Andy, Elise, Max, Mav and the new baby.  Speaking of Mav, we received a cute picture via text this morning.

Sunday night we celebrated Thanksgiving with the whole family (except Elise and Andy).  We also invited a Korean family.  I met Heeyoung ice skating.  She and her family are here from Korea for a year.  Her husband is on research sabbatical.  I don't think they know many people as it is a little bit difficult to communicate with them.  Heeyoung does fairly well, but her husband Jun doesn't seem to know much English at all.  I was a little worried they'd be overwhelmed at the commotion, but she told me "I'm just so happy."  It was fun to have them.

Sara, Effie, Crista and Jieun

Dan with Greta and Dojin

Matt with Dojin

Ruby with Heeyoung's son (I should of taken a picture of their whole family)

Nick, Finn, Effie and assorted appendages.

Greta, Dojin, and Finn

Another great picture of me!  Roy and Ruby reading a story
before they head home to Logan.

Nick and Adrienne 

I don't think Adrienne will mind me sharing her news (since most everyone reading this newsletter already knows.  She's expecting a girl sometime in April!!! We're so excited.
(We acted happy, but the Green's acted ecstatic.  I need to learn to show my excitement more).