Help me! My auto-ship is out of control! Oh, and the rest of my life too!

A friend came over to help out today, so I was feverishly working on the computer to fix a problem with my "Amazing Grass" auto-ship.  They, of course, don't wake-up for another three hours, so I was trying to send a detailed email.  They have a new website and its just not working very well for me.  I'm typing against the clock (i.e. little Amber's clock) and check my email.  It was an auto-ship notification from Amazon.com that I wasn't expecting and did not want: 24 boxes of Mac & Cheese.  We still have 8 boxes from the last order, when the boys were eating it a lot and their buddies came over before practice last spring. It is a bit too much.

That sort of sums up the last week, life is a bit out of control :-)

Despite herculean efforts to convince baby Amber she needed to make her appearance on October 14th (because it was Chris' birthday and he wanted to share it with her) or at least over the weekend (because my OB was on call).  She had no interest in our time table, not one contraction.  We had cleared the calendar of baseball games and everything else, we were ready for her but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  I had two OB appointments on October 14th to "stir things up" and our friend was at the house for the day to take care of the boys.  My husband and I ended up having two dates, one for lunch and one for dinner and a lot of time spent together in-between.  I can't remember the last time we had even one date.  During our day we really got a chance to re-connect, talking like a married couple, not just a mom and dad on furlough.  Instead of welcoming our new little girl to our home over the weekend, we had some great family time and got the house totally in order (including catching up on laundry!).

Then on her actual due date, October 18th, things started to pick-up speed.  None of my children have come within three days of their due date, one was late by 10 days, so I totally didn't expect anything to happen for another week.  My contractions were strong and five minutes apart around 12:30pm and would slow down a little by 5pm, but by 7pm we were on the way to the hospital with them between 1 and 3 minutes and increasing in strength.  I've never been in the hospital for more than 90 minutes before delivering and the fourth baby is suppose to come quicker right? Wrong!  Apparently she didn't want to come on her due date either.  After 14 hours of labor she finally made her appearance at 2:19am on October 19th.  When she did decide to come out, she came so fast, the doctor didn't make it in time, and with one nurse only having one glove on to catch and another nurse just putting on two gloves in time to "block", she basically slid out onto the bed. :-)

Isn't she beautiful?!  Right out of the oven.

The boys came by later that day to visit and well these pictures says it all - chaos!

She's over a week old now and "no" we are not settled into a routine and I never thought we would be this soon anyway.  We did our school work all summer long to have our break now and that's what we'll probably do for a few more weeks.
Here are a few pictures of our beautiful girl from her first mini photo-session with her Daddy.