Just about as soon as the Christmas Day party was cleaned up,
we headed to Juneau to see the kids there,
and my daughter Eliza, her dog Jeff, and the redheads came back to Haines with us, so we made sure we took a photo with all the grandchildren in it:
Trouble is it is already outdated…
January 9 Lila Chip Lende was born!
We will meet our Australian granddaughter in a month, and who knows when all eight of them will be together, but that’s a project for next year. My son and his sweetheart Ella are over the moon, and so are all of us. They live way out by Perth, in Western Australia, far from the fires, in the small town where Ella is from so there are grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins surrounding her, too.
Technology gets such mixed reviews, but there is nothing like FaceTime when family is far away– I mean, we saw Lila sleeping and yawning in Christian’s arms when she was a few hours old and “visited” with Ella in the hospital room. And of course all of his sisters are texting and sharing photos with them like crazy. Thousands of miles, and a day apart, we were still all together for the blessed event.
The holidays in Haines were marked with a terrible tragedy, when two wonderful young men, both 21, died in an avalanche while snowboarding in the Haines Pass on Dec.30. It took the breath out of all of us. They were, in many ways, so much like Christian was at that age, goofy and adventuresome, smart and kind.
I learned that Lila Chip was on the way while I was speaking to the father of one of the boys for the obituary. The baby was about a week early, so I was surprised by the pinging message — and blurted out the news without thinking, and then apologized if I had made his loss worse, but he said he was happy for Christian to have a child, to be a dad too, and that he needed some good news right now as well.
Talking face to face, and one on one helped everyone begin to process the shock and sorrow of the boys’ passing, and so I figured sharing good news would be better in person, too. It was much more fun to show a photo of the baby to friends in the grocery store and hear the exclamations over her cuteness than see a thumb’s up on Facebook. (I know I’m biased, but honestly, she’s darling, isn’t she?) and I especially love her name. Chip is still smiling. Looking at a video of the baby sleeping he said, “I think I’ll call her Chipper.” Then he thought a minute and said, “Wait, she’s Australian, so it will have to be Chippa.”