What a lo-o-o-o-ng day!

First of all, a couple of pictures. There are more here, as well as a beautiful video that you just can't watch without tears.

Lori gets a close-up look at the little passenger she's been carrying around the past nine months.

Introducing Austin Mitchell Stauffer, born today at 12:40 AM. I have not heard yet what he weighed. But, according to Anthony, he is the most perfect baby there ever was!

So, as many of you know, Anthony kept the world up-to-date on the day's events yesterday via his iphone and Austin's website. I first knew something was going on when I got a text message from Lori around 6 AM saying that her water had broken and they were getting ready to go to the hospital.

Thankgoodness, because Austin's website does not have a blogger address, (blogs are blocked on our school's computer network) I was able to access it from the computer in my classroom. Also thank goodness, we had just a half day of school yesterday, so my teaching load was much lighter than a normal Friday. When I got home from doing some errands later in the afternoon and Dick got home from a job interview, we expected to soon leave for the regular trip to Reading to pick up Destiny. (How could we be away from the computer that long???) However, we were surprised to get a phone call from Destiny's mommy saying that they had other plans, and Destiny would not be coming to our place this weekend.

Thus started the longest evening of my life! I made a lot of phone calls to arrange for us to be able to be absent from church Sunday morning. I got most of my regular Saturday work finished - the bookwork, the bills, the laundry, the music preparation for the worship team - all the while keeping an eye on that website. As the evening got late and Lori's labor was getting tough I was sitting here praying, Dick and I prayed together, I was on the phone several times with Lisa and Jeremy, once with Anthony, hitting that refresh button every minute! January 16th passed and still there was no baby! When I hit "refresh" at around 12:50 AM and there were pictures of a baby I just fell to pieces. I called Lisa and Jeremy, and got Dick out of bed to come look. Later I talked with Anthony again for a while, and finally went to bed at 2 AM. But I could hardly go to sleep! Around 5 AM I woke up and had to come check the website to see if there were any more pictures. There was that adorable video! Then I went back to bed till nearly 8:00.

After a scheduled appointment at 1;30 this afternoon with my dad and several of my siblings (which I will definitely write more about later - we're visiting our childhood home) Dick and I will be heading to State College until Monday. I have off school for Martin Luther King Day. I was so hoping Austin would be born by this weekend, and he listened to Grandma already, ha, ha, ha!!