Autumn's #2 Bday

Ike!

Evacuate because of Ike. I feel guilty to go back again to Marc and Shannon’s as we were just there (labor day weekend - Gustov hurricane). Nice to have somewhere to go though! The traffic was not bad, Doug got a free vacation out of it! Had a fun weekend, movies and games, cousins playing with one another. Phones down, so did not know if house was damaged or not. (knew electricity was off as our answering machine did not answer) Got info off of kingwoodunderground.com. We were getting pretty scared for those who decided to stay in Galveston – heard they were told to write the SS# on their arm… 20,000 people stayed after being told that rescue workers would not be allowed into the area during the hurricane. Surge predicted to be very high, don’t know why they would stay, especially with kids…

kids vegged in front of movie - cousins had fun playing together in Austen!


Marc making pancakes - they are such good cooks!


home again home again, giggidy gig!
below, our house - the only one with no trees down :) we lucked out.


neighbor to the left of us - they lucked out too, tree just barely scraped one of their windows.


neighbor across the coul-d-sac also lucked out, tree just missed his house. He was out of town, so we we went over and used our new chain saw removing this one. It was really fun getting together with all the neighbors, everyone helping one another out. (great BBQ's - had to use up everything in the freezer before it went bad!)


Below, our backyard. The only damage caused was because of the power lines (and because of this we did not have power for 2 weeks - grrrrr.) Scary to go in the back yard, power lines draped over everything. The power comp finally came out, and grrrrr - cut down our beautiful palm trees. The top of the first palm fell onto the patio, right on top of the skimmer, busted the cement (double click on picture, you can see one big chunk of cement busted off into pool). I talked them into at least cutting the rest of the trunk down, although they just left everything in the yard. We were able to drag most of it down to the curb for FEMA to pick up. The big trunk still in the yard though. Sad to lose our trees.

cooking in the kitchen

Tuesday Sept 2nd
James’ first day in Joy school! It was at Courtney’s house. Courtney was in Heather’s joy school too – brought back memories of doing the same thing with Heather, now it is the younger siblings going through the same program. Courtney said James reminded her of Heather – I don’t think they act very much like one another, but maybe they do have some similarities. James made a few little things that he was very proud of. They are learning about dinosaurs, and James was really excited about it. Just me and Autumn at home! I did laundry, she took a long nap – recovering from last weekend I guess.

Labor day weekend!

chasing chickens!









Aug 29-Sept 1st
Labor day weekend! We ended up going to Marc and Shannon’s, sort of a last minute trip. There was another hurricane – Gustov I think, ended up hitting New Orleans again instead of us. We had a fun weekend though, went to the park and shot off some rockets, flew some kites. Ate lots of good food (Marc cooked everything) they had a little kiddy pool outside that the kids played in. They also have chickens that Autumn and James fell in love with. They would chase them around, scoop them up, and snuggle them up like a stuffed animal. The chickens were surprisingly accommodating to the attention, they let the kids catch them when they were fast enough to run away if they wanted to. Marc and Shannon had a tent set up in the living room for the kids to “camp out” in. They had a lot of fun with that too.

Rockets and kites - James launched the rocket!








Daddy and daughter flying kites






boys with their wagon full of rockets, kites, and food.


6 girls (2 not in pict) and one boy :)

sisters...

Back to School!

Aug 25th
Heather’s first day of first grade! Her new teacher’s name is Mrs. Welch – same name as last year, different person. We rode the bikes back and forth – James and Autumn are getting heavier! A good workout. Sounds like they all had recess together, Heather got to play with her old friends although she does not know many in her new class. She said she already made a new friend though. I went over some worksheets with James on measuring things, which are longer, which are shorter etc. He did really well. Cleaned the pool – frustrating, the big plastic chlorine buckets require a jackhammer to open, but finally busted in. Cleaned out a bathtub too, knee deep in various chemicals today.

Summer's end

Aug 8-25th
We went to the museum, went swimming, Ruthann and James came over for a day, had a dinner with them and another couple from Colorado – I did not know about this until the night before (Sunday) so I was a bit unprepared, ended up just fixing spaghetti, O well. It was fun to see everyone again though. We did some babysitting, a few rainy days, went to the library, went out to eat with Doug for lunch. We went out to a fancy Italian restaurant, don’t think we will try that with kids again for a while… the next table over offered to buy Doug some wine after watching our attempt at dinner. We rode bikes to the park, tied Chaco up to James’ bike, and he pulled James the whole way. We read “Yurtle the Turtle” earlier that day, and James recited “I’m king of a house, I’m king of a mule, I’m king of a cat, etc. as he was swing up high. Little Autumn has been singing, she can hit the notes of twinkle twinkle pretty well. She is still having trouble at bedtime. One night we tucked her in, then she grabbed a teddy bear and tucked the bear in. We left the room while she was still working on the bear to go tuck James in. We caught her sneaking into James room – she saw us and immediately threw herself on the ground and pretended to be sleeping. We carried her back in and found a dozen little stuffed animals all tucked in her bed. She had tucked them all in and then left the room, just like we tuck her in and then leave. It was pretty funny. Heather working on tieing her shoes again, last year her shoes did not have shoe laces, this year they do. She is getting really good at reading. Practiced the piano a bit with her too. She started doing a version of broken chords with her left hand, a little improve that was pretty neat. The summer went so quickly! Can’t believe it is already time for school to start again.

Sunday August 10th
Last week was kid’s camp at Irene’s house on MWF – kids had a lot of fun. Also, big scare that we were going to have another storm – Edwardo formed quickly off the coast, and went right over kingwood. Cleared off the porch got water canceled book club - but it turned into just a tropical storm, then tropical depression. Big lightning storm last Sunday night though.

Aug 8th was our anniversary! We were able to get a babysitter, went out to eat – steak and grilled salmon, sweet potato loaded with marshmallows and Carmel sauce. Ate so much we got stomach aches! Then we went to a 3D movie – Journey to the center of the Earth. Doug bought us a nice camera for the occasion – really excited about that. Our old camera was very slow to take a picture – missed all the good shots because it would not focus etc… It will be really nice to have a faster one.

Spent weekend doing yard work – the neighbors are selling their house! I don’t know why, have not caught them outside to ask why, they said before they wanted it to be their “forever” house. O well, I hope our new neighbors will be as nice as our old ones have been. Kids have runny noses/cough. Doug had a pretty bad headache on Saturday. Gave everyone haircuts, cut Doug’s hair pretty short.

Thursday was family fair enrichment – Kristine taught us, emphasizing “I” statements – “Lord is it I?”. Instead of “you did this, you make me xyz” say “I feel xyz” I statements keep you from blaming other person for things, let’s you take ownership. It was a fun night. Other RS stuff – helped Kari clean house they sold, made a baby quilt.

Doug and I were watching a movie, and heard a large thud – thought possibly a tree fell on the roof, or maybe a transformer blew in the back… turned out part of MB ceiling collapsed after air conditioner leaked water onto it. We just replaced some of the master bath ceiling, had some left over drywall.

Found a Joy school group for James – sounds like there will be 5 kids in it. should be fun!

Pcts of new camera – went on a walk to feed the turtles – James fell 3 times, Autumn fell down a whole in the grass – just her head poking up.