Sarah

Today is Sarah's sixteenth birthday. I can hardly believe my baby is now old enough to date. And she's driving too. If you remember from my blog entry last year on September 26 describing our decision to move to San Diego, Lisa had a special experience letting her know that there was one more baby yet to come to our family. We had always planned on having six kids but after Alex about killed Lisa we decided that maybe it was time to quit. I was actually quite excited about having another baby but I was not about to mention it to Lisa because after all, I'm not the one who has to carry or deliver it. After Lisa's experience in the temple we never mentioned having another baby again until one Sunday evening Lisa and I were sitting in the front room and out of the blue she says to me, "we need to have another baby". We were both really worried because we were flat broke and we didn't have any insurance. I don't know if it was irresponsible or not but we both felt good about it and so along came baby number six. I guess the Lord took pity on us because it was by far the easiest pregnancy of them all. After our first year lease was up on our house we decided to move again. Our rent was going up and a fellow in the ward had moved away and was willing to rent his home to us. It was a bigger, nicer house and less money. It was on a canyon, in a cul-de-sac and literally across the street from the Deer Canyon Elementary School. As much as I hate to move we couldn't refuse the offer. Oddly enough, on the day we moved into our house Lisa went into labor the next morning. Lisa called up our brand new neighbour to watch the kids and off we went to the hospital. It was very early in the morning around 7:00. Our new neighbours, coincidentally, were Chuck and Jeanne Cotter who are now Ben's new in-laws. I'll bet she had no idea that the little boy that she was babysitting would end up marrying her daughter. We arrived at the hospital and I dropped Lisa off at the emergency entrance and went to park the car. As I was parking the car Lisa waddled to the nearest wall and leaned against the wall to suffer through another contraction. There was a man sitting outside smoking a cigarette and he was looking very nervous. As I ran up to meet Lisa she told me that her water just broke. That was a new one for us, in all of the previous five births the doctor had to break her water in all of them but not this time. As soon as Lisa mentioned that her water had broke that smoking dude bolted. He was out of there.

From the time we arrived at the hospital to when Sarah entered this world it was less than an hour and with no pain killers of any kind it was a very easy birth. As the doctor went to cut the umbilical cord I made him stop. I informed him that I had cut the umbilical cord on all of my other kids and it was only right that I do it for this last one as well. Cutting the umbilical cord is a very weird experience. It is big and rubbery and not easily cut. It also seems like you must be hurting someone as well but neither the mother nor the child cries so I guess they're fine.

Sarah's birth seems to have been a foreshadowing of how she would live her life. She is the kindest, sweetest, cuddliest and most obedient child you could ask for. I can't even imagine life without her. I'm so glad that we decided to go for number six after all.

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Scientist have now determined that warp travel (as in the Star Ship Enterprise) to other stars is actually physically possible. At least according to string theory. Unfortunately, the energy required to just start the warp drive (not even considering the energy required to travel anywhere) far exceeds all of the energy that exists on earth. I guess I'm not going to other stars any time soon.

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