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!)