Don't Forget About Me!

Just a quick note to let you know we are still safe and OK. However, while we do have power (Praise the Lord), we do not have phone, internet or cable due to Mr. Ike. It looks like it might be another week. So, don't forget about us. We got moved in and our house is FANTASTIC. We are so happy to have a home. I will get you all up to date as soon as I get my computer back....(I am at the library now :))

As for our rent house...they still don't have power, so my friends over there are real troopers and very sensitive to the light--ha. They need all your prayers!

We are Outta There!

This family is safe and I can't tell you how overwhelmed I am at all the emails and phone calls and sweet messages from all of you. Thank you. Friday night and Saturday morning might have been the scariest time in my life...hearing the windows pop, the trees falling, and feeling the house shake. For 8 hours it was like being in the middle of a tornado...and I was 100 miles north of landfall. I can't imagine what it was like closer to the coast.

Babe was evacuated to Dallas for work, so the boys and I drove on to Oklahoma to stay with my parents indefinitely...until the power is restored in The Woodlands. While we closed and made it to our new house, everyone cancelled their deliveries. So, we were camping again, in a new house with no power and our unopened boxes from the rent house. I needed a shower. I needed air conditioning. And, I couldn't find a thing in that dark house. Needless to say, the excitement of spending the first night in my new house was a bit tainted.

Our house miraculously has no damage. Unfortunately, our neighbors weren't so lucky. One of our huge trees fell through our neighbors house. In The Woodlands, obviously, the damage is all from the big pine trees falling. Roads were impassable and everywhere you look, houses have trees on top of or IN them. It's going to be a long recovery and even longer for those in Houston and Galveston.

From ice storms and tornadoes in Oklahoma to hurricanes and heat in Texas. I don't know which is worse, but one thing is for sure, I will be purchasing a VERY large generator while I am in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma friends...call me! I am here for the duration!

y-IKE-s

So, Hurricane Ike is headed straight for Galveston and Houston. The City of Houston will be shut down tomorrow, mandatory evacuations across the Gulf Coast begin at noon today. And this family is supposed to close on a house today, IN Houston, no less. Remember the traffic I mentioned before? WE will be in it because we have to close on our house in the thick of it. Not sure if the movers will be arriving in the morning.

Honestly, moving isn't what we should be concerned with right now. We are on the "dirty" side of the storm. This means strong winds, loads of rain, possible tornados, and practically guaranteed power outages everywhere.

We are hunkering down...with everything we own packed in boxes and nothing in our cabinets. Lovely.

He Made My Day

We are closing on our house tomorrow and starting to move our boxes from the rent house. Then, Friday will be a day of pure excitement. My furniture, my decor, my THINGS that make me happy will be arriving via United Van Lines to my new house and I will finally have a home. It may be complete chaos for weeks, or more, but it will be my home and I will bask in its presence. A home!! I can feel my body relaxing each day I get closer to having my own space with my own things. I will no longer be "camping" like we have been doing since December 6th to be exact. The excitement is overwhelming. If I don't make it to the computer the next few days, please know that not only am I moving into my house, but I will also be retrieving a bit of my sanity!

Yesterday was a tough day. We all have those, don't we? (Don't we?) I was tired of packing, of planning utility hook-ups, of organizing deliveries. I saw a doctor yesterday who told me I had a lot of work to do to get my health in order. He was very kind, but he was stating the obvious and I can't stand not being the epitome of health. The boys were bouncing off the walls, making bad choices every time I turned around, yelling and screaming, and loving every minute of their complete rebellion. My head hurt and my body wasn't helping me a bit. I cried a bit and wallered in self-pity a bit and cried some more. I just had a day where I just needed to release! And release I did...all over Babe. He listened and appreciated and hugged and fed me dinner. Atta boy!

This morning started everything all over again. I went to my new Beth Moore Bible Study after I dropped JBS at school. I am completely amazed at God's timing and how beautifully the study spoke to my heart and at precisely the right time. She even said something about the "again-ness" and how we just can't get through a day without depending on the Lord. We can't do it alone. I really needed to hear that, albeit the millionth time I have heard it.

Since then, I picked up the boys and they have been perfect angels. They haven't been arguing or jumping off the roof of the house, or swinging from the ceiling fans or WWF'ing each other. Today, life has been good. JBS made me these pictures and it made my day. He was very serious when describing them to me how he specifically selected each color "because Mommy likes lots of colors, like the rainbow." Then he said he would sign them, so I could hang them up in our new house. And that I will do!

I just tucked him in for his nap and he held my hand and guided it through his hair so I would scratch his head in just the right way, revealing his 4 random freckles under his hairline...which started his uncontrollable giggling. I love the little things. The little things bring me the most joy and peace all at the same time. The things that seem big at the time just melt away. As long as my family is good, I am good. Everything else in life is just icing on the cake.

I like icing, but the icing wouldn't be anything without the cake!

Hermie the Catepillar

A few weeks ago, our church had a Hermie the Catepillar event. The Hermie children's books, by Max Lucado are really cute and sweet books with good moral lessons. We invited neighbor J and his "Mum" and little brother, neighbor A, to come with us. We had a great time.

When we arrived, crafts were in full swing. They served cute little Ding Dong spider treats (one of the characters in the book) and we had story time with Webster the Scaredy Spider.

This is cute neighbor J. He went through a Spider Man phase, as you can tell. His mom was doing laundry on a daily basis there for awhile...

And his precious little brother, Neighbor A. He is always all smiles...

And my own little toot, JBS. JLS wanted no part of the hat wearing pictures or the yummy snacks. So, that must be how he missed out on having his picture made...

It was a great time...especially while biding our time the last week before school started!

Alright, Already.

Goodness gracious (one of JBS's favorite sayings). I have heard enough! Many of you bossy folks (that's why I love you) want to see pics of the house and they just don't seem like much to me, but I will show you what I have. The house is almost finished. We had our walk-thru with the builder last Thursday and he has his list of repairs to complete by closing on Thursday. Whooda thunk that an impending hurricane could delay our closing, but it might. Evidently, insurance companies won't close on houses down here if there is a hurricane in the gulf. I guess they would rather it blow away under someone else's umbrella. Ol' IKE is headed straight for Houston. We are going to proceed as though we are closing, however, until someone tells us we're not. I so hope we are, as we have so many deliveries planned for Friday and Saturday betwen furniture, appliances, window treatments...I stopped writing them down because my calendar was full. I won't know who to call back!

Pictures...

The living room is on the left when you walk in the door. Windows face front porch. (I told you the pics weren't exciting!)
The dining room is to the right of the doorway, but I didn't like the paint color so I didn't take a picture, yet. It has been re-painted. Just beyond the dining room on the right are the stairs.
Just past the living room on the left is the powder bath...with a big wall of storage. Oh, how I LOVE storage!

There is a wide foyer from the front door into the den. This is a photoshopped pic, as it was dark. That's why the colors look funny. Looking from the kitchen in to the den...

From den to kitchen. The bar will be changed a bit once I move in. You can't tell, but the bar is worn black. I am adding a veneer around the back of the bar so it all looks like one piece of furniture. I dont' like the sheetrock there at all....



Off the Kitchen is a guest room/hobby room for me. I tiled it so I could have a craft room for the boys and scrapbook room for me. It has a full bath and closet...future baby room, if there is a future baby :) Sorry, no pic.

The Master bedroom is off the den to the left (opposite the kitchen). Sorry, forgot a pic...later!
Master bath...more space than Babe and I could ever fathom what to do with coming from a tiny Mid-town Tulsa bathroom. We could have a party in there! :)

View of Master sinks...

Um, the closet. It wraps around to the right, too. With every child, I lost a closet in my old house. Thus, I got rid of clothes because I had no room for them in my tiny closet. NOW, I have an excuse to go shopping. I just have to fill that closet up with clothes! Someday I am hoping for the Closet Factory or one of those companies to come fix me up.
Walking from den toward front door. We will now head upstairs.
When you get to the top of the stairs, this is the overlook. That ugly chandelier has been moved and come Monday will be replaced with (what I think to be) an awesome Antler chandelier that I found at my favorite, Anteks. I can't wait!

If you make a 180 degree turn from there, you will see the game room. I love this room b.c it is upstairs, it is open to the downstairs and you step up to it. I see us LIVING in this room. If you walk in this room and turn right, there would be BABE's manhole...the media room.

From this position looking in the game room, if you turn right, you go thru a door to see this computer niche...I love this area. I need to put some upper cabinets.
You follow the turn of the computer niche to a bathroom on your left and this guest room straight ahead. It faces the front.
JBS and JLS's rooms are to the left of the game room, but I didn't get pictures. They have a Jack and Jill bathroom.

So, Ms. Belle, that is it! I hope sometime you can come down from your new Canadian castle and visit us. Will post again after we get settled...

It's a Good Problem to Have

I am still working on getting all my old posts from Kristi, the angel, re-input into my blog. It's a beautiful problem to have, but there are SO MANY. I have all the content and no pictures, so I am having to go back and find the pictures in my archives. I go back and forth looking for pictures and posting those and then working on cutting and pasting posts from Kristi's e-mails and saving them to my drafts.

It's a long process. And, as I said before, it's a beautiful problem to have. So, keep checking back pre-June of 2008 to see all the precious memories that Kristi redeemed for me...over 200 posts!

Kristi already had a pedastel in my life, but now her perch is a lot higher! :)

Big Wheels

JBS officially used up his first Big Wheel. He was racing around the cul-de-sac like he does every day when he said his Big Wheel popped. I had him bring 'er in for a maintenance check when I discovered that he had completely worn out the plastic wheel. The front wheel was as thin as paper in one area and it really had popped! I wish we had an odometer on that Big Wheel...it's use has multiplied times 100 since we arrived in The Woodlands.

I was thinking we should buy JBS a new Big Wheel for Christmas. Great idea, except that by the time I came inside the house, Babe had already been on-line and ordered not one, but two new Big Wheels...one for each of the boys. This time we ordered the Radio Flyer because it has reinforced wheels that will hopefully take a few hundred more miles than the original.

So when the boxes arrived with the pictures plastered all over the outside, the surprise was gone and the boys couldn't wait until Babe got home from work to put them together.

If it weren't for the darkness that arrives each night, they would both still be doing circles around the cul-de-sac. Around and around and around....and around and around and around.

A good purchase, those Big Wheels.

Baby Sister

We had a milestone weekend in that Babe and I had our very first babysitter in over 10 months. It's true. I am not sure how we survived. With moving once, then twice, we left several of our favorite babysitters in Tulsa (you know who you are, girls!) I had a very hard time just trusting a friend of a friend's daughter when I had just met the friend herself. So, for our anniversary and Babe's birthday and the day we met, for all those important days of celebration we were a team. This was really fun. But you can understand how very exciting it was to get away alone.

So, you might be asking what kind of wonderful romantic dinner did we have? We used our first babysitter in eons...to go buy appliances and furniture! Yahoo! We actually really needed the time to shop without the kids and we loved it. We loved our babysitter and I never worried once about her. She is the daughter of one of my favorite people in The Woodlands that I have met helping get K-Life started here. She is and was very responsible and cute (JBS really prefers the cute girls) and wonderful.

As I have mentioned before, JBS also desperately wants a baby sister. So, when I told him we were having a really cute and fun babysitter, he interpreted it as a baby SISTER. When I went outside I found that JBS and JLS had set up camp at our front door in our sunglasses (mine and Babe's) waiting for their baby SISTER to arrive.

They were so excited when our babysitter arrived that they forgot to be disappointed that they didn't receive a new baby sister....phew!

Bike Washing

JLS has been paying close attention to his daddy when he washes the car. JLS wanted to go outside the other day while I was finishing up packing a box. I told him to stay in the driveway and I would be out in one minute. When I came out, I found JLS with the water hose in hand, Babe's car washing equipment at his side and his bike out in the driveway. It was bike washing day for JLS. He was so good. I watched him hose off the bike and use the mitt to wash it down. Next, he pushed is super duper Tonka dump truck over to the wash line. He proceeded to wash it down with great skill...Big Daddy would be proud.

Within a few minutes, JBS and neighbor J, were outside and discovered JLS had the water on. JBS tried to talk JLS out of the hose, as usual, but this time JLS had all the control. In a flash the little stinker had soaked JBS and neighbor J leaving them grovelling and pleading for relief. JLS relished in his victory and decided to cool himself off, as well.

And so it goes on a scorching Houston day in the life. The water hose comes in very handy in times of desperation. Toys? Who needs toys?

How I wish I could give every little piece of primary colored plastic in my house away!