We celebrated Bella's 2nd birthday on September 21! Time has flown by this month. We have had alot of school functions, concerts and school plays. Hannah was first chair for her fall violin concert, Dee made it on the demo team for Kickstart and Faith had a part in the Kindergarten and First Grade school play! Jeb continues to learn in school and is actually spending time at the craft table once in a while. He brings home wonderful creations now. Today in Primary he drew a plane! It was amazing. I will try to find it later and scan it in to show everyone. Bella continues to work with me at the TABC office. She loves to watch Baby Looney Toons and Dora. She sings songs from both shows. It is SOOOO cute!

We had a great time carving our pumpkins and enjoyed a spooky but wonderful Halloween! The kids were all characters from Batman. Jeb was Batman for the 4th Halloween in a row! I stayed up all night on Thurs. before Halloween making Faith's costume. I spent a lot of quality time with my new sewing machine! We battled it out for many long hours, but I think I came out the victor. Just don't look TOO closely at Faith's Batgirl dress. She loved it, so that is all that matters! We had a great "trunk or treat" at the church and then did a little "trick or treating" after that. We missed having Mom and Ba at home, but Mom left behind wonderful goodies for the kids and Z-man was there to answer the door! It is hard to believe October is over!

We are looking forward to heading to Mississippi in November to see Maw Maw and Paw Paw for Thanksgiving!

Ike

Hurricane Ike

The last week has been dominated by IKE. This time last week we were starting preparations, everyone was nervous, and to be honest, a little excited. The excitement has gone down and is replaced with sadness for all those who have lost either their homes or lives. We have never seen so much destruction. We are so sad for Galveston. It is one of our favorite places. We also love Kemah and the boardwalk sustained quite a bit of damage. However, we have been greatly blessed because we only received damage to several of our trees and our fence. The clean up has dominated most of our time. Ba, Mom and Zach have been over several times to help us with the trees and to fix parts of our fences. We rented a wood chipper yesterday and reduced the giant piles of branches into two piles of wood chips. Fortunately we also got our power back on Tuesday evening. Mom and Ba still have not received their power back, but have helped their neighbors by sharing their generator with them. They have also helped us immensely. We are so blessed to live near them. Please pray for them that they will get their power back! One of the tender mercies of the Lord is that we have had a cold front move in and the weather has been beautiful. It has made things tolerable for those without power. I don't know how people lived here in Texas before air conditioning!!!

We also celebrated Jeb's birthday last night. I think he had a good time. He is 4 now. We can't believe that he has grown up so fast. His school was damaged by Ike and so he won't return to school until further notice. Hannah, Dee and Faith return to school next Monday. Things are slowly getting back to normal for us. I will post some pics. soon.

The Boomerang Flu

Well, the last couple of weeks have been dominated by what I call the boomerang flu. Faith attended 2 days of school and then came home Tuesday and threw up. She stayed home Wednesday, but returned to school Thursday and Friday, but just wasn't acting like her energetic self. I assumed that she was just tired from Kindergarten, but on Saturday the flu came back with a vengeance! The sister missionaries were over for lunch and got to experience the fun along with all of us! Poor Faith. The rest of the kids soon followed, with Hannah getting it the worst and Bella getting in right as we were preparing to go to Austin for the TABC board meeting. That made the trip fun. It struck Hannah again during the trip and Bella in the car - in her car seat (always a fun clean up) on the way home from Austin. Brad also got it and actually took a sick day yesterday! I am the only one that has avoided the horrible disease so far. Sorry for the graphic details, but it has been the major focus of our lives lately!

On a happier note, the board meeting went great and all of the kids are enjoying school. Faith has decided that she might want to retire from Kindergarten and not do the school thing, but I have tried to convey that she is in for a long haul of at least 13 years of school. She leaves for school not so happy, but comes home excited about her day, so I think in a couple of weeks things will iron out for her. Jeb started pre-school and loves his class. He missed the first two days of school b/c of the flu, but is glad to be able to play on the "big kid" playground this year. He also has two of his many "girlfriends" in his class this year again, so he is a happy guy!

Bella is the only one of our kids not attending school and she is very sad about it! She would love to go with Jeb, but I would be the sad one if no one was left with me. I guess our family is really growing up. We are so proud of each one of them. We have so many blessings! (I can say that now that the boomerang flu is gone!)

School Days, School Days, Lots of Golden Rule Days!

The summer has officially ended! I can' t believe it is over already. Faith started school on Monday. Last Friday Faith met her new kindergarten teacher, Ms. Maddox. Faith was so excited to start school. She was actually quivering with excitement on Monday morning. By 5 p.m. on Monday she had crashed on the couch! I think all day kindergarten will take some getting used to!

Hannah and DeDee started school on Monday also. DeDee couldn't wait to start middle school and Hannah was happy to not be the youngest in her school this year! I have had the wonderful luxury of working from home most of the summer, but it was back to work for me, Jeb and Bella on Monday also. Jebbie starts pre-school next Wednesday and Bella will continue to be my assistant at TABC this year. We are happy to be back in a routine, but I miss the girls so much! We were blessed with such a wonderful summer!

August 2008

Busy Month

We've had a busy month! Finally last Wednesday (July 30) Hannah and Dee came home. Our family is complete again! It just wasn't the same without them. They had such a wonderful time in Utah with the Kratz family. We are so grateful that they were willing to care for our girls for an entire month. Hannah was able to attend girls camp, a super activity where they stayed in a cabin and water skied and then she camped out in Clover with the Kratzes. She also stayed a few days with her cousin Spencer and his family. She had a great month. She loved the comic book store she encountered and spent a whopping $125 on comics and t-shirts. She still hasn't moved on from her obsession with Wolverine and X-Men though!

Dee loved spending and entire month with her cousin-friend Emma. They are like two peas in a pod and had such a great time together. She and Hannah also loved spending so much time with their other cousins Gracie, Kate and Max. They think of them now as more like sisters and a brother than cousins. Dee came home with presents for everyone, lots of earrings and her favorite - clothes and shoes from Aunt Cassie! She also discovered DI and loved shopping there. She is getting ready for the big move to middle school.

Faith, Jeba and Bella were also thrilled to have their sissies back. They missed them as much as Brad and I did and we have returned back to our usual routine. We are having a wonderful summer and it is coming to a close way too fast! We are going to post some pics. showing our experiences over the last few weeks!

Trip to Mississippi

We just got back from a wonderful trip to Mississippi to visit Maw Maw and Paw Paw. The kids had so much fun exploring the woods, playing on the slip-n-slide and shooting fireworks with Daddy. We were saved by the dvd player as we traveled by car. The kids were all so good on the trip, although Faith said she would have liked to have flown instead of driving 6 hours in the car. We missed having Hannah and DeDee with us, but hopefully they will send us some pics of their vacation in Utah and we can add them here! Our Fourth of July celebration was wonderful. Maw Maw and Paw Paw made a delicious dinner that we enjoyed all weekend. We were sad to have to leave to return home on Saturday afternoon! Hopefully we can make it back up to Mississippi in the fall and see Lance, Kim and Cousins also when we go back!

June 2008 and beach

Welcome to Our Blog

We have not been as dilligent as we should have on keeping all of you up to date with our family! Hopefully this is a good solution. We will try to update as much as possible. Things are busy this summer and we have already had a wonderful family reunion at a beach house in Galveston. Hannah and Dee are in Utah for a month and we miss them so much! Jeb and Faith are enjoying the pool and have gained a huge interest in Lincoln Logs. I will display some of their creations. Bella spends most of her time trying to destroy what they have made and then she runs for her life!!