I received the following e-mail tonight when I sat down at the computer.

Kelia and I want to introduce Riley Ashton Pless.  She weighed in at 7.0lbs and is 20-1/4″ long.  We came in to the hospital to be induced a little after 9:00am on 12.19.08, but after many hours of steady contractions little Riley was getting a little distressed and ended up being delivered via C-section on 12.20.08 at 2:34am.  We finally made it in to our post-delivery room in the morning.  I’m not sure I can remember the last time I was awake for 24 hours.  Kelia is still in some pain from the surgery but is recovering well.  We’ll most likely be in the hospital for another couple of days.  We’re getting some very quick training on becoming parents and learning how to cope with a major lack of sleep.  We can’t wait to get home.

Attached is a snapshot of our early Christmas present.  We’re not sure exactly who she looks like yet, but what you can’t see under the hat is that she’s got Kelia’s red/strawberry-blonde hair.  We’ll be in touch soon.  It’s now time for a 15 min power nap before the next feeding and diaper change.

Kelia was one of my best friends in high school and I’m very happy for her and Jon (who obviously wrote the letter).  They live in Raleigh though, so it’ll probably be quite a while before we get to meet little Riley.

Other than that today was mostly uneventful.  I had a handful of things to do early this morning for work then I went out and finished up my Christmas shopping and wrapped up presents.  We also got a UPS delivery from Scott, my boss, today.  Not only did he give me a bigger Christmas gift than he had previous years, but he also sent some popcorn.  It’s got a bunch of different varieties that I’d never even thought about having for popcorn before, and they all look really good.

I also made a macro photo studio based on something I read a couple weeks ago.  I’ve wanted to do a little stock photography, so hopefully this will help me get going with that.  Here are some initial images I took with it.  A couple of them are a little blurry, but that’s because I’ve learned I’ll need a decent tripod at some point instead of the cheapo one I bought several years ago.  I’m pretty pleased though, overall.

Amanda and I watched an episode of Saturday Night Live from a few weeks ago (hosted by John Malkovich) then I dozed off on the couch for a bit.  When I woke up we had a discussion about the stresses of Christmas planning.  In part of that we talked about what to do for future Christmases.  What we’d like to do is to have Christmas at our house on Christmas Day, and whoever wants to come to that can come to that.  Since my parents have four kids, two of whom will have kids by next year and one who may or may not be married at some point in the foreseeable future, planning will be hard for them, so I think I’ll propose having Christmas with them the weekend after Christmas every year.  It would make planning a lot easier if we all just had an agreed-upon system down.  I’ll talk with my youngest sister, Andra Sawyer, about that at some point.