As you could tell by my post on Wednesday, Shannon finally had her baby girl!  She made it to 35 weeks–which is AMAZING since she had been on bed rest for the past 6.5 weeks!  They actually didn’t know if it was going to be a boy or a girl, so it was a delight to find out.  I’m beyond thrilled that they now have a girl since I’ve loved having a girl so much.  Now we can share girly stories together.  🙂

Bailey Joy was born in the wee hours of the morning, making her birthday in November and not December which I found humorous since we had joked about not wanting to have the baby share her birth month with Christmas and now she doesn’t have to!  She was 5 pounds, 13 ounces and 17 inches long–just a tiny thing, but healthy and doing great.

I’m planning to go up and see them on Sunday afternoon (Wednesday’s picture was thanks to Angie Chilson).   It will be weird to hold such a tiny baby–especially with my chunk of a baby, JD!  🙂

In other news…

Chloe and I went Christmas shopping this morning.  We had a bunch of errands to run and she did really well except that I could tell she was getting progressively slower at each store.  I finally let her ride in a cart in the last store to give her little legs a rest.

I’m starting to gear up for my studio recitals on the 18th.  The cakes have been ordered, everyone has their songs picked and I’m working on getting the programs started so I’m not working on them last minute.  Now I need to start working on making Christmas candy this weekend!   It’s a big task, but I enjoy doing it.  This year I don’t have a full weekend to devote to making candy so I’ll have to break it into smaller chunks of time and hopefully I’ll still be able to get everything done without feeling frantic.

We just found out that the other piano player at church is moving away at the end of this month.  Her husband was offered a job in Michigan, so that’s that.  I’m sad to see them go.  I’m also stressed about what that’s going to mean for me playing… will I need to step in and play every week?  And then what about when contest season rolls around?  I normally take a few weeks off to keep my sanity, but perhaps I won’t be able to do that this year… yikes!  I guess we’ll just have to see.  Maybe someone will emerge from the woodwork and volunteer to play.  🙂