Heaven!

 

What a heavenly week we’ve had here at Baliwood…ending today with the arrival of our number 20 beautiful grandchild. Just look at this 9 pound cherub, delivered straight from heaven today (Sunday) to Jonah and Aja.   

 

It may have been hard for amazing Aja to feel that heaven for the last few hours as this little girl decided to arrive posterior…facing heavenward!  The most amazing part is that she delivered that baby at home!

After several hours of agony with no hope of anesthesia but with the help of a midwife and her assistant and an amazing husband who could have delivered that baby himself after reading all the midwife material available, Aja was finally able to push that baby out at 3:17 p.m. She had planned to have the baby yesterday (12-11-10) but then she had to accompany someone at a Christmas program so she had to put it off until today. This may sound weird but we are convinced that Aja knows everything and can do anything, including going into labor! So thanks to her loyalty to a friend, 12-12-10 is just going to have to do!  Name still pending.

FYI, the kids were with friends at church and then at a piano concert. When they got home, they had a new sister!

Can I just say that Aja is incredible, unbelievable, amazing, strong, valiant, brilliant, courageous and integritous (new word but you know what I mean). 

Also included in the heaven of this week was a trip to the Salt Lake Temple with our dear friends of our group called Inklings.  One of our members is in the Temple Presidency so we had a lovely meeting in the chapel with some great insights from him before attending a session.

We met in the cafeteria for dinner before the meeting.  Imagine how heavenly it was to sit directly across from three of our kids’ Mission Presidents and their wives. Saydi’s mission president Stephen Shallenberger of the Spain, Madrid Mission was there (his wife had another committment), Noah’s mission President and wife, The Bennetts of the Chile Santiago South Mission were there and Charity’s mission president and wife of the England London South Mission The Swintons (Heidi just finished President Monson’s biography) were there. It was truly a slice of heaven! 

 

In addition to all that we had a heavenly lunch with Larry Gelwix (the rugby coach depicted in the movie Forever Strong) and his wife about doing a cruise for their company and found that they have just been called to be Mission Presidents. AND we had a lunch here on Thursday for Dad’s committee that he’s been working with downtown.

Then today, just as we were listening to a truly heavenly special Christmas stake conference presided over by Elder Dallin Oaks we got a text from Jonah saying that Aja was in labor. I can’t imagine a more heavenly week!  Just pure heaven!