The Legacy of Mrs. Waddelow Continues

During our recent travels we got to meet for the first time the two newest additions to our family.  How great is that?

While on the Eastern Shore visiting my aunt, we got to meet Jack, who was born February 4th.  Jack is the great-grandson of my Aunt Frances, grandson of my cousin Nancy and her husband Bob, and son of Nancy's son Rob and his wife Amanda.  At the time of our visit, Jack was two weeks old.  In fact, he was exactly two weeks old the day we met him.

Here are some photos.  First are Amanda, Rob, and Jack.  Don't they look relaxed and even rested?  And look at how tiny Amanda is!  I don't think anyone would ever guess that she had had a baby two weeks before.

Here I am (very wind-blown) holding sweet little Jack.

The next photo was taken the week before and is of my cousins Anne Paul (on the left) and Nancy (on the right) with Jack.  The photo was taken the day that Amanda and Rob took Jack to meet his great-grandmother (my Aunt Frances).  Jack is Nancy's third grandchild.  Anne Paul will become a grandmother for the first time in a couple of weeks.

Nancy decided months ago that she wanted to stitch my Family Record Sampler as Jack's birth sampler.  My design has the verse and personalization stitched over one linen thread, but since Nancy doesn't stitch on linen we needed to come up with a solution.  Instead of over-one stitching, why not backstitch the information?  That is exactly what Nancy did. 



Nancy also added a border to the original design.  As you can see in the photo above, she took the band right above the two deer and used that to create her border.  (Love that, Nancy!)  She also stitched her initials and the year in the bottom corners.  Nancy started stitching the sampler months before Jack's arrival. Once she knew that Amanda and Rob would be having a boy and she knew what his name would be, she stitched that info on the sampler.  All that she had left was the birth date, and once he was born she quickly added the date and dropped the sampler off to be framed on her way to the hospital to meet Jack for the first time.  The sampler is now in Jack's bedroom.  (I wish I had thought to take some photos of his darling room which has an animal theme.)

Did you notice Jack's last name?  Yes, it's Chesser.  What do you think the chances were that my cousin  would marry a Chesser and I would marry a Chester?  Jack is the name of my uncle, little Jack's great-grandfather.

After leaving the Eastern Shore, we headed to Florida to see Tom's father.  When studying the map, I discovered that our route would take us only about half an hour from Raleigh where my cousin Linda lives.  (Linda is one of my two cousins on my father's side of the family.  I have three cousins on my mother's side.  We are a pretty small family.)  We decided that we would spend the night in Raleigh and take Linda out for dinner....it was actually a pre-birthday dinner as her birthday was the next day.

Then it was on to Jacksonville to see Tom's father.  My nephew Mark (my sister Evelyn's son) and his wife live nearby in Neptune Beach.  Mark and Stacey welcomed Layla, their first child, into the world on November 29, 2012, and we hadn't yet met her.  So off we went in the pouring rain to meet Layla and see Stacey and Mark and their new home.

Here I am with the proud parents and little Layla.  It looks like little Layla is most interested in her mommy which really isn't a surprise, is it?

And here I am with my one and only great-niece.  Guess that makes me a great aunt.

Jack and Layla are part of Mrs. Waddelow's legacy--Amey Waddelow was their 10th great-grandmother.