It's Lucky Seven -

Our seventh grandchild was delivered over the weekend and there is joy over the arrival of this lucky infant. After two weeks of headaches, dizziness, and low levels of critical fluid the doctors decided to help Danica and nature along with a little inducement. About 6 hours after a lunching on patosin Danica delivered a beautiful nearly six pound baby girl named Charlene Hazel McDonald. They are going to call her Charlie for short. She had dark hair and beautiful light skin with a face just like her brother Jensen. I guess that means that the next one will look like Lily. Everything is perfect with Charlie like sleeping through the night and eating well, except a small causality of birth. She has a “windswept” foot which means it flairs out a little too much. That should correct itself with time and is not a worry.

I can’t believe I’m old enough to have seven grandkids until I run head on into taking care of Lily and Jensen for the weekend. I can go biking for several miles (even uphill), play racquetball for 2 plus hours, or swim a full triathlon worth of mileage and come away a little fatigued, but that is nothing compared to watching a 2 and 3 year old for the weekend. It wiped me out and I don’t understand it – but little kids just drain off energy from their care givers. Thank goodness they are cute or it would be twice as much work. How did we ever survive 6 kids with anything leftover for middle age?

I took the kids to the park yesterday and was helping Lily climb on the monkey bars and this boy asked if she was my little girl and I said, “Ohhh.... no, she is my granddaughter”. He said I couldn’t be old enough to have a grandkid. I wanted to buy him an ice cream cone.

I also had a fun missionary experience this week. The missionaries have been working with this one young man for a long time and because of family complications he couldn’t be baptized but they continued to teach him. He was coming over to the house for a lesson and the missionaries were a mess. They had other elders over at the house and were playing risk and arguing with each other. With 15 minutes before the investigator arrived they were fumbling through a pile of CD’s with the BOM on audio and were going to play something for the young man. My father instincts took over and I took away the CD’s told them to find a quiet place to pray for inspiration as to what they should teach. They came back from prayer excited – they had remembered while praying this scripture guide that would be perfect to read with the investigator. I coached them a bit on a few things as the potential member arrived. After the lesson they came in to my office and said the scriptures were perfect and that the young man will be baptized in two weeks.