Our Blessed Nest: First Meetings.

Since baby "Teddy" came late at night, the children didn't get to meet him right away. As you can imagine, they were at the hospital first thing next morning. They were all very giddy and excited to see and hold their new baby brother. And Papa was of course excited to meet grandbaby #11.

It seemed diplomatic to go in birth order.

So, first Nathan got to hold him,

then Ella,

Adeline,

and Evelyn.

Evelyn looooves babies. She felt pretty special to get to hold "her" baby all by herself.

Finally, they even let Papa have a turn...kind of. :)

Matt likes to make sure I get in at least one photo, so here's me with all the kids. My new brood of five (though Caleb's hard to see). After the baby, the kids considered my bed the second most exciting thing.

The weekend coincided with our nephew's birthday party, so my sister Brenda and her family also got to meet him in the hospital. As a bonus, Matt and the kids got spend a few hours at Chuck-E-Cheese.

We also were pleasantly surprised that some friends from church also stopped by for a visit.

With their four kids and our five, it was a full room!

Since the kids were always with us, Matt and I didn't have a lot of time to discuss a name. Matt took the kids home that night as well and stayed with them. We had a list of five names we were choosing from and had to speak in code. For example, "I'm leaning towards C, but how do you feel about S"? It could have been fun to include the kids in the conversation, but I knew they would have opinions and would likely just end up upset their choice didn't win.

We had the middle named settled. We had chosen Louis, after my mother Lois.

For first names we considered: Caleb, Harmon, Henry, Silas, and Theodore.

As you know, we choose Caleb Louis.

Caleb seemed the most "Thompson-like". The other boys in the family, Matthew and Nathan, are Biblical names that start with a consonant (if you're curious all the girls are non-Biblical names that start with a vowel).

We also loved the character of Caleb from the Bible. Joshua 14:14 states that Caleb "followed the Lord, the God of Israel, whole heartedly". My soul would desire nothing greater than to see all of my children follow the Lord whole heartedly...and so it was the chosen name.

Side note: you may have been thrown by the name Harmon...I was too. Matt really liked it though, and it is kind of cute.