What a wonderful, crazy day...

Warning: this is a long post :)

I have always been blessed to live around family, except for the 18 months I lived in Arizona. Even when I lived in Logan, if I needed something my parents would make the drive to help me out. I have definitely been the recipient of hours of service and good deeds by family, friends, and neighbors. Today I was able to help my sister-in-law in a time of need. I'm not blogging about this to make myself look good, but rather to express my feelings.

My brother-in-law left for Iraq last April. Shortly thereafter they found out they were expecting baby #3. The timing was perfect, she was due Dec. 10th. He was due home for a two week visit right at that time. On Tuesday of this week, I called her and she had no change. She wasn't dialated or contracting. She was 39 weeks and her husband was due home Thursday or Friday of this week. Things were on track. Wednesday morning I got a call from my mother-in-law saying they were on the way to the hospital, labor had begun. I was excited for her and anxious to know how I could help. My sister-in-law has a wonderful visiting teacher who had offered to take her kids. They dropped the kids off on the way to the hospital. I picked them up from her house in the afternoon and they came over to play with my kids. The crazy part is they didn't know if they were having a girl or boy because they wanted to find out together. That didn't quite happen. They ended up having a boy. Baby E. was born at 5:35 in the evening. He was 6 lbs. 8 oz. He's such a cutie and so little. My mother-in-law picked up the older two kids that night and looked worn out since she'd been at the hospital since early that morning. She spent the night with the older two kids and the whole next day.

This is all leading up to today-the wonderful, crazy day. We found out that my brother-in-law wouldn't get in until Friday night, so we had to figure out how to get my sister-in-law home from the hospital, take care of the kids, and pick up my brother-in-law from the airport. During this whole ordeal, he has been unavailable by phone, so he doesn't even know that Baby E. is here which just adds to the craziness. My mother-in-law had to go back to work, so I picked up my sister-in-law from the hospital. I didn't want to take all three of my kids with me, so I sent them to a friends house. I went to the hospital, took her to her house, picked up her kids from her saint of a visiting teacher, took them to my house, picked up my boys and headed home. Arranging 5 carseats takes a bit of time. The kids had a great time running around and playing. We made lunch and I got the two youngest boys down for naps. While they napped, I had fun braiding my nieces hair. I'm trying to get some practice in until Baby H finally gets some hair :) It was fun. My niece looked adorable.

The original plan was for me to keep the kids until about 5:30 when my mother-in-law would pick them up and take them home. My brother-in-law's flight was scheduled to come in at 7:30 and Jeff was going to pick him up. That changed when we found out the flight was moved up to 4:05. I had volunteered to make dinner for them, so I had to improvise since we were going over a lot earlier. It definitely takes mad skills to entertain 4 older kids, feed a baby, and make dinner for two families. We headed over with the kids and the dinner at about 4:30. I ended up cooking everything over there while we waited for the guys to get home from the airport.

My brother-in-law has the best sense of humor. He's such a fun guy to talk to and be around. This is the side of him that I'm used to seeing. When he walked in the door I saw a completely different side to him. He was so excited to see his family. His kids ran up and gave him big hugs. He was surprised to see everyone there. He looks immediately at his wife and realizes she's holding a baby. He'd already seen me holding a baby so he knew it wasn't mine. He starts counting and you can see it register on his face. He says who's this? He was already emotional from seeing his family, but by this time he and everyone else was in tears. It was such a tender moment. We didn't want to intrude on their time together or overwhelm my sister-in-law (who had been home from the hospital only hours at this point). So we all left and came back here to eat our own dinner.

I've seen family reunions of service men and women on the news and heard about them a dozen times, but I've never been a part of one before. It was such a neat experience. They truly sacrifice so much to serve our country. When my brother-in-law left for Iraq his son was barely walking, now he's running around and talking. I know it's been hard for him to be away.

So when it's all said and done it was a wonderful, crazy day. It felt so good to be able to help somebody else. I truly believe in what goes around comes around. I've been the recipient of so many wonderful gestures. It's nice to be able to do that for someone else.