Rachel's Blessing Day

At church on November 13th, Nathan was able to give Rachel a name and a blessing. Rachel is Hebrew and means Ewe. Darlene is American and means dear, loved one. Picking a girl's name was very difficult for us.  It wasn't until about 2 weeks before my due date that we had our top three names.  There was Rachel Darlene, then Eliza Rose, and Sariah Dawn. If this baby was a boy, his name would have been David Nathan.

Rachel is a good fit for our family because it has 6 letters like everyone else and now we have two names that start with an H and two names that start with an R. I think the name is pretty and it was the only one that stuck out to me. My mom was actually the first person to suggest it. I also like middle names that start with the letter D and Darlene is the name of my college roommate who has become my kids' adapted aunt.

Sunday was also the Primary Program, this is where all the children from ages 3-12 can help present the themes they have learned at church throughout the year. The year's theme was "I know the Scriptures are True." For the program, the kids who were 9, 10, or 11 years old did little 2 minutes talks that focused on what we learned during a certain month. Then one of the age group classes answered a question about the same topic.  Hailey's class question was "What do you love about Jesus?" Hailey's answer (that she came up by herself) was "He gave us my family."

Church is three hours long. The blessing blessing and the Primary Program happened in the first hour. After that, my parents, Morgan's family, Darlene's family and I came home to set up the luncheon. Nathan had a class to teach the second hour.

During the third hour, Hannah had a seizure during nursery (a class for 18 months to 3 years old). It long lasted 40 seconds and she had a father there who is a nurse and also has a daughter who has seizures. She was well taken care of and was able to rest afterwards with Nathan. It's been about 4 months since her last seizure. When Nathan told me what happened, it caught me off guard emotional and was hard to handle. I'm with my kids all the time and have been very involved with Hannah's seizures and treatment. It's hard that she had a seizure and I wasn't there to comfort her during or after it. Hannah however bounced back quickly and acted normal for a busy Sunday with lots of people around. She was a bit cranky and took a while to settle down for her nap.

 I realize that especially now with having four kids, I can't be there for each kid at the same time all the time. I am the type of person who tries to do everything by myself. I am thinking for the quiet moments I can slip away to feed Rachel and admire the wonder that she is.

 I'm thankful for Nathan who is a wonderful partner and is very capable of handling our kids especially with medical emergencies. He was asked once how did he stay calm while delivering he's own baby. His response was something like "It's just a baby. It has to come out sometime."

 I am thankful for everyone who could come and support us. It was fun to celebrate the birth of our newest member of the family.