"When we called to sing Happy Birthday to Joshua on Sunday he told us Audrey had been at the hospital all morning with contractions. They never got closer together than about 4-5 minutes apart, and the hospital sent her home. Audrey was walking on the treadmill when we called, hoping to hurry up the process. Guess what, Bobbie Sophia Waldron came.
Although not without some help. Audrey was up all night with contractions. Her water broke Monday morning, and they went back to the hospital. After another day of contractions she had only dilated to 4.5 cm, and at about 4:00 PM the doctors decided the baby was under some stress, and so Audrey ended up having a C-section. Everyone is fine, and Rachel sent Matt a digital photo, so we saw Bobbie Sophia Waldron within a few hours of her birth, even though we are a long ways away.
Bobbie Sophia Waldron was born 7 pounds 12 ounces, and has a lot of dark hair, and chubby cheeks. The Doctor said the chubby cheeks held her up from coming out. She was a 7.9 on the Apgar. Audrey and Joshua sounded very tired to Andrea when they called her. So Andrea volunteered to tell everyone in our family. We were just getting ready to go to Bush Intercontinental to pick up Matt when Joshua called with the news.
Matt is coming home for a few weeks before going to Iraq. The 145th Utah National Guard from the Provo area has been called up. Since Matt did not go with the 222nd when they were deployed to Iraq, and since they need his expertise in the 145th, he was called up to go. He will be with us in Houston until May 30th, then he and Andrea will go to Utah for a week, then he will go to El Paso for 2 months of training, and then he goes to Southern Iraq, next to the Kuwait border, where the 145th will be Military Police at a prison. Matt is very excited to be going. Andrea is OK with it, and we are naturally concerned that he will be in a combat zone where people blow other people up. Matt, hopefully you will stay close to the spirit and will be guided where to be, when, so you will return safely. I firmly believe it is not an accident nor a coincidence that when the 222nd was sent to Korea, and when they were recently in Iraq none of the soldiers were lost. Just as the 2,000 stripling warriors were watched over in the Book of Mormon by God, those soldiers who have dedicated their lives to serving Heavenly Father are watched over today. This does not mean there are no deaths among the faithful, it means we are comforted in knowing Heavenly Father is with them, whether they come back to us or not. Matt will be away from the main action, and both Andrea and I feel good about this assignment. His interest in the military means he is going to be involved, and this seems safer than other options in a very dangerous profession.
So as we drove to north Houston Andrea called folks. First she called Heather, who had called first thing this morning to tell Andrea Audrey was at the hospital. Since it is Heather's birthday Tuesday I sang Happy Birthday to her while driving. Heather's response was, "Don't quit your day job," then she said I needed to make this the title for my next Thoughtlet. I told her the next Thoughtlet will be Bobbi Sophia Waldron. Then Andrea talked to Uncle Russell, then Aunt Katherine, then Uncle Robert, then Aunt Jill, then she left messages for Aunt Sara, Roice and Sarah, Ben and Sarah, she talked to Kate, left messages for Melanie and Jared, Sara Ellyn, and Rob. She told Matt when she went into the airport to get him, and Mattt had a photo from Rachel on his cell phone before we were back on the Tollroad. Isn't technology marvelous.
When we got home from the airport there was a package of notes from Aunt Nadine which Andrea opened and left out. I picked up the pile,and the first note I read said:
Both Matt and I really thought this was hilarious. We laughed a lot. It was good to hear Matt's laughter in the house. The laughter helped me cite my mind forward and remember the future (Alma 13:1) , the time when Bobbie Sophie Waldron's laughter fills the house she is in. Isn't it amazing how one little action can lead to premonitions of other actions at a future time and place? And there is no doubt in my mind about the fact time will prove my premonition right.
Tuesday night we were surprised and pleased to hear Rachel discovered Megan Conners is Audrey and Bobbi Sophia Waldron's nurse. I guess Megan is expecting soon also. I see Sister Conners most Sunday's, and it was good to see Jim when we went to Michael Cahoon's funeral service (0710.html). Shannon always give me a hug and lets me know how much she loves me as her former Primary teacher. However, I hadn't even put together that Megan was married. It must have been one of those wedding receptions I missed because I was traveling. Also, on Tuesday Aunt Katherine was the first of our extended family to visit Bobbi Sophia Waldron.
Wednesday I was in my office, when who should show up by Mike Bennett, the salesman who retired from GDC and whose office it was before mine. We had a nice conversation catching up on what has happened since he and Mary Lynn Southers moved to Whitefish, Montana. He had no idea about my interest in condensation as a new source of water. Mike has become very involved in the water discussions in Whitefish. It made me homesick for Cedar City to talk to Mike about these issues. Time will tell. Sometime during the day Andrea and Audrey started talking about Andrea going up to Salt Lake to help when Matt returns to Salt Lake on the 30th of May. I was pleased to hear about this conversation. In the evening Andrea, Matt, and I went to see Spiderman 3. Lots of action, lots of fancy computer graphics, and the movies are becoming more and more comic book like. I enjoyed the movie, and I left the theater with a kind of drained feeling. Not a feeling of exhilaration like accompanies an uplifting movie.
Thursday we received the following note from Joshua:
I responded with:
You should each let Joshua know what you think of our first official photo of Bobbie Sophia Waldron:
Friday was an unusual day. The best part of the day started at 5:15 AM when I finished my shower and looked at the 6 photos in the e-mail Audrey had sent at 12:14 AM Friday morning. For everyone's reference, besides our regular e-mail's, you can always send pictures to our Ceivaframe directly at rn.66859A74@ceivamobil.com. In addition, I have set up a directory for all photos which have been sent to our Ceivaframe, which all of you can review at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Ceiva_Uploads/"> I've also created a directory for Audrey Sophia Waldron at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/06_JoshuaAudrey/01_Bobbie_Sophia/. As mentioned above, I expect to place some fascinating photos in this directory over the coming years.
I spent the day at the 2007 SEG/EAGE DISC (Distinguished Instructor Short Course). The course was titled "Concepts and Applications in 3D Seismic Imaging" by Dr. Biondo Biondi from Milan, Italy, who is now at Stanford University. The day consisted of four lectures, starting out with a review of the fundamentals of Seismic Imaging, which is a computer processing procedure for getting seismic pictures which more accurately represent the subsurface. The other three lectures focused on choosing the most effective migration algorithm, estimating the velocity model, and poor image quality caused by irregular and inadequate data spatial sampling and incomplete subsurface illumination. I know, this is more than any of you wanted to know, and if you love me, you will at least learn to say "Dad is doing PSDM (Pre-Stack Depth Migration) for Geokinetics." You don't have to tell folks how much I dislike my current assignment.
I don't get out among my peers very often, and there are often some neat interactions when I do. In this case, the first person I was talking to was Paul Ware of Occidental, who told me I taught him how to do Landmark 3-D seismic interpretation a long time ago. Ray Durkin of Sasoil, a South African oil company, was also there, and told me about how I had helped him in his career. We ended up eating lunch together, and I was able to pass on a reference to Dave Willis in seismic acquisition regarding a large 3-D seismic survey Sasoil is going to be running in Mozambique, a few hundred miles south of where Brad Macurda, Dr. Kola, and I did all of that 2-D sequence stratigraphy years ago. Issues needing to be addressed to do the survey include the Dugong - an endangered manatee mammal (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dugong), 10 meters of water depth, 6 meter tides, and deployment to Mozambique. Of course, a lot of my closer friends were there, including Wulf Massell, Rocky Roden, Luh Liang, Fred Hilterman, and others. The day gave me a better context for the stuff I'm assigned to work on at Geokinetics Processing & Interpretation (../0641.html). However, it was not enough new information to get me excited about my job. I am looking for the exit strategy.
Driving downtown early in the morning, and then driving back out to Katy Ride at 5:30, both ways in maximum rush hour traffic: "AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHH!" The thing that made this commute bearable was Paul Cardall's CD, 'Songs of Praise,' which I mentioned last week (0717.html), and which I have become quite fond of. Both ways I ended up listening to the song Joshua wrote, and since this Thoughtlet centers on his and Audrey's new daughter, it seems appropriate to share the words from this song with everyone. I find the words sincere, deep, and full of love. Things we can all incorporate a little more into our lives. I think of the words I wrote in one of these Thoughtlets when I first met Joshua (../0437.html), and how judgmental these words come across to me now, and realize that I'm the prodigal. Oh well! I do my best to be honest, straight forward, and to repent when I make a mistake. Even though most of you don't read these Thoughtlets each week, I anticipate someday you will, and when you do you will realize how much I love the 10 of you, plus Justin and Bridget, plus Brian, plus Wesley, Madison, Logan, and Carley Staheli. Recently, I came to realize that having started posting this weekly effort on world-wide-web on the 23rd of August of 1996 makes it one of the oldest continuous blogs in the history of the web. Anyway, I do my best and I do my best to repent when I recognize a mistake, just like I want each of you to do. The words to the song PRODIGAL by Joshua Waldron tell this same story:
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Friday evening was our annual turn at the Peanut Butter Cannery. Because of the commute from downtown, I was late getting home. And I had stopped at the store to get Andrea flowers and me things to add to my salads for lunches and to replace my jelly beans and gum. Brother Beckstrom and Alex (../0621) were there, and asked if Matt was going to the cannery with us. I responded, "Maybe, if you call and invite him." Brother Beckstrom called, Matt came, and I think Matt enjoyed himself. We rode up and back with Brother Jurinak, which was nice. I was assigned to mix the sugar, salt, and fixer to put with the peanuts as they cooked into peanut butter. I ended up sweating like I really worked hard. I was tired by the time our shift ended at 2:00 AM, but mostly that was just the lack of sleep thing. When we got home, I watched a poor recording of the 'Numb3rs' episode from earlier in the evening to wind down. Went to sleep about 3:30 AM Saturday.
Needless to say, I slept in Saturday morning. After mowing the lawn on Saturday, I spent some time working on the Biological Section (page 168) of Chapter 3 of "An Open Mind." I also ended up taking a nap, because my sleep cycle was off. Andrea wanted to see a movie that only played Saturday evening at 10:00 PM at the Katy Cinemark Theater, and so the two of us went to see 'The Flying Scottsman' well after our normal hours. Good adult movie. The depression/suicide portion of the movie was hard for me(../9835.html). At least everything turned out fine in the movie. I've often have wondered what drives folks to compete so hard at sports, and I guess this is related to what drives any of us who overachieve to do what we do. I will explore these thoughts in some depth at the beginning of my next Thoughtlet (0720.html).
Sunday, May 13th we had a very nice sacrament meeting. I wrote a possible stanza for Prime Words based on a talk by Sister Maureen McPherson (a):
I was able to stay awake in my Primary Class. Of course, a lot of the reason is the kids were wired again, and were climbing off the wall. Oh well! We did have fun, and it is certainly good to have Brother Larson in the class with me to assist in crowd control. When we got home, I immediately took a nap. And then I took another nap after a wonderful lunch. I'm getting too old to be up late at night. Andrea and Audrey talked and she is home, and staying up all night because the baby is awake all night. There is great wisdom in young people having babies and raising them when they have the strength of youth to take care of them. As much as I love my grandbabies, I love them from a distance, and I'm glad I'm not there to spend all night rocking and calming them, even though I would love to be able to hold and to rock and to calm Bobbie Sophia Waldron."