You are the Champions

Around labor day I sent out a big, and I mean BIG email update for about three months of activity.  Seeing as it was about one month from #2's due date I initiated a friendly competition.  Now that #2 has arrived we can officially announce the winners.

Here are the facts:

• Augustine John Schafer was born on Friday, October 5th at 1:02pm
• He measured 20" long and weighed in at 8 lbs. 6 oz.

Below are the winners in our three categories:

MOST ACCURATE: A.J. (one of Pete's students) guessed :

• John James 
• October 5th
• 8 lbs. / 22 in.

A.J. is also quite tickled that Augustine is an A.J. as well.  We got quite a few guesses that mentioned John but no Augustines.  The closest in that regard or style was perhaps Aunt Sr. John-Mark Maria of St. Peter the Apostle that guessed Thaddeus James, which we translated to a potential T.J.

MOST ENTERTAINING: Rianna (one of my students from Mother of God School in Gaithersburg, MD)

• Girl
• Eugenia
• October 1st

A steady stream of laughter filled the air upon reading Rianna's email submission.  Her reasoning behind her guess was that it sounded like Euglena.  (For those of you that may have forgotten, a euglena is a type of protist which is one of the five main kingdoms of classification of living things- along with plants, animals, fungi, and monerans. The euglena is kind of nifty- single celled organism, though, because it behaves like a plant some times (photosynthetic) and like an animal (hunting or ingesting other organisms).  It also has an eyespot and moves in it's fluid environment by whipping a long whip-like structure called a flagellum.
   
Mostly I was tickled that one of my students remembered something from class and touched that she took the time to formulate a guess that appealed to my geeky, sciencey self.

MOST RIDICULOUS: Uncle Joe Gless ( I fear he had an unfair advantage as those of you that know Uncle Joe know that he very well may have chosen St. Ridiculous as his confirmation name just to get a chuckle out of the bishop)

• Theresa Schafer Schafer
• September 27th
• 7lbs. 6oz. / 16 in.
• Blond hair

No that is NOT a typo.  I suspect the Schafer Schafer came from the fact that Luke's middle name is Francis which was my maiden name.  Comparatively 16" was small as the next smallest guess was 19".  The blond hair comment is by no means ridiculous as much as random passers-by may think given the darker hair hue that both Pete and I exhibit.  Currently Augustine's hair is dark but so was Luke's when he was born and well... look at him now.  All things considered Uncle Joe may be mellowing out a bit seeing as his name suggestion when we were expecting Luke was "Snake".

Prizes to be awarded soon to our talented winners.  Otherwise, I also wanted to note that a majority of the guesses were for a girl and as the first wave of submissions came in the baby kept getting bigger and bigger.  Very few people guessed into October and as much as I would have liked that to be true...God's in charge.  More blogging and comments to that effect later.  I'll close with my first blog picture (more pictures to come soon too- I promise)

Family Photo before leaving the hospital on Saturday afternoon/evening

Augustine John Schafer in the Jungle on day six