The big news this week is that Marcela had her baby!  Santiago Enrique Fernandez was born on Thursday, September 20, at 1:50 p.m., weighing in at 6 pounds, 10 ounces.  Laura won the office pool.  I always knew she was quite wise and knowledgeable, but apparently she is quite more intuitive than any of us guessed.  We collected money for a gift for the Fernandez family, and Saturday Joe, Geoff and I went to decorate their door and leave a basket of La Madeleine treats for them.  Unfortunately, they were discharged from the hospital earlier than we thought, so the surprise element was kinda gone.  But we did get to see little Santiago, who is a quite handsome boy, as far as newborns go.  He's got a very healthy color and was so sweet sleeping in his bassinet.  Marcela looked very healthy, herself, almost refreshed and well-rested.  It's incredibly amazing to imagine that little baby was hanging out inside Marcela for the last 9 months.  It makes me so, so eager to have Thomas out where we can see and meet him. 

I was so taken by the tiny Santiago, that I completely forgot to take pictures.  I even had my camera in the car.  Ugh.  I'll have to give Marcela a call, to see if she would like some black and white pictures of the baby.

Earlier this week, we received a wonderful package from Patti, Joe's dad's significant other.  She included a beautiful, soft cream-colored afghan for Joe and I and an adorable hand-made Pooh bear baby quilt for Thomas.  Both Patti and Joe's dad will be coming for Christmas, and we're looking forward to having the whole Abdalla family together.

Thomas had a nice, uneventful week, save the birthing and auto mechanics classes.  We had to watch some fairly graphic videos in the birthing class, which does not have me looking forward to the actual labor part.  I can't believe that I ever thought it wouldn't be something I'd worry that much about, as I did earlier in the pregnancy.  It really does not look like much fun.  It also soooooooo reinforces my wish to not have any type of video recording material in the room during labor. 

Unfortunately, it was our last auto mechanics class.  Sherri and I removed our wheels and checked out our disc brakes.  Pretty neato.  Most of the things we learn are so simple once you figure out what to do, and get over the fear of breaking the car.  I'm almost disappointed that there's not much to do on my car, since it's so young.  Her car has all sorts of fun things to do!  Of course, Ole Betsy has over 170,000 more miles than my car.  It's certainly an example of why our next car should be a Subaru (a Forester, to be exact).  Since Sherri and I enjoy our Wednesday meals at House o' Pies, we're trying to figure out another class that we could take together, since this one was so much fun.

Joe and I did manage to pick out a baby book this weekend.  It's more of a 5-year scrapbook, where we can add pages if we wish and has some photo album pages.  It's a fun zoo animal design, that's not too sickeningly sweet, but still juvenile.  It'll be fun to keep up.  We also wandered around trying to find stuff from which to make baby announcements.  Our plan is to have them almost made, with the addresses labeled and everything, and then just fill out the info and send them off.  Unfortunately, we couldn't find any paper that we liked or could afford.  We finally found a place on the web, Paper Zone, that has wonderfully cheap prices, compared to the single page prices we were finding in most stationary stores.  A little research uncovered a few good comments about this merchant, so I feel pretty good about ordering stuff from them.  But you'll have to wait until you get the announcement to see what they will look like.