Part IV - Drive to Abilene for the big meeting

OK - I've gotta get this story finished!

So it's October 3, 2003 - Friday morning. Much to do. Plan to leave Fort Worth at 11:30 a.m. to pick up bambino at 2:00 in Abilene.

Here's who is going:
Car One - Kelly, Joanie, Joanie's Mom
Car Two - Kelly's Dad, Kelly's Mom
Car Three - Wade, Patty, Mary Chris, Brenda

First things first. Get my nails done. (You can't become a mommy with ugly nails!) It was fun telling my nail folks that I was going to be a mommy in a few hours. They were amazed.

Go to Babies R Us and get a baby book. I wanted to have something for the attendees to sign. Incidentally, I parked in "Expecting Mothers" parking at BRU. If I didn't qualify for that, who does??!!!!!

I called Shei somewhere along the way to tell her I was going to use "Blake" as his name. She was cool with it. Not like I was going to change my mind or anything...but I wanted to tell her anyhow! She was nice to share the name with us!

Back home to get ready to go.

You should have seen how much stuff we packed to take to Abilene. Looking back on it - it cracks me up! We probably took 6 diapers with us! We WAY overdid on what we took. Inexperienced parents! Of course, we had to take every camera we owned. I'll bet we took about 3 blankets too!

So the troops gathered at our house. I remember that I was still ironing my clothes for the day when people began to arrive at our house. And...since we were in the middle of JBF Sale preparations, the ironing board was in the living room...so there I was ironing in the living room. Crazy! We were all so giddy!

Wade was there to do his video documentary for us. He filmed every step of the way - walking out to the car, getting in, driving off from our house...the whole nine yards. The Weaver-mobil had to go by Brenda's in Benbrook to pick her up, so they got separated from us.

Finally - off to Abilene!

"Andrew" for middle name? Yes...the decision was made.

I called my aunt in Houston whose last name is Andrew. She liked our choice.

So we are rolling along nicely to Abilene. Kelly's folks are right behind us. Patty and gang are further back - we don't know how far. We probably didn't get off right at 11:30, so we are probably scheduled to arrive at Christian Homes at about 1:45 - which is actually the perfect time. At about 12:30 (we are only 45 minutes into our 2 hour drive), Christian Homes calls us and says "Is there anyway you can be here at 1:00 p.m.? We've got a bunch of our board members here who want to be a part of this but some of them cannot stay until 2:00." YIKES!

We told them we'd get there as early as possible. Oh my word! I wish they'd told us this sooner! So we have about 90-ish miles to go in 30-ish minutes. Uh...that's sort of difficult to do. All this time, Patty had been trying to catch up to us...now...needless to say...she would never be able to catch up with us!!!!!! We called Kelly's folks and told them we were about to start going even faster. Oh my....oh my. We didn't make it much earlier than we had planned - maybe only 10 minutes or so. It was a wild and crazy ride. Kelly was on his phone most of the time to someone - and I was on mine too. It was a fun trip. Half the time, we were just checking on where Patty was. She tells us later that she was going 100 mph to try to catch us. That makes me sick just to think about it.

We finally arrived at Christian Homes. (Here we are at the front door just as we arrived.)


We unloaded a ton of stuff (thankfully, not everything we had brought with us) and went inside. We were greeted in the lobby. Emily Tate blew in the door just about then. She'd been waiting for this day very eagerly with us. Apparently, she had told all of her professors that if this baby ended up coming during class one day, she'd just have to excuse herself! What a sweet girl to join us for our special day.

Our case manager Kenyan gave us the scoop on how things were going to work. I asked if the baby was already here and she said "yes". MY BABY * is already in the same building that I AM IN!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my! What an amazing feeling. We were going to wait for Patty and troops to show up, so Wade could continue filming everything, but Kenyan told us that she really wanted us to meet little Blake first, all by ourselves. That sounded like a good plan.

So while our family and friends were taken to the conference room to wait for us, off we were taken to a room to meet our son for the first time. (Here are some of our buds that came with us.)


They had the conference room decorated very cute. They had cookies and punch out, and had little alphabet blocks spelling out "Baby Morrison". They had these "throne chairs" set up for Kelly and me and then other chairs set up around for our family, friends, Christian Homes staff and board. This was much more than I expected!

I just cry all over again as I write this. I guess all moms feel this way when they see their child for the first time. It was so amazing.

More soon.

* Kelly's baby, too!!!!!