It's getting cold outside...Brrr.....

But I still cannot convince my children to put their shoes on! Hee... hee...

I absolutely LOVE my girls in hats!! Yeah for cold weather!!

Sneak Peak for the "A" Family

Every now and then there is a sweet boy out there who can tug my heart strings like my own Joshua does. This little boy was one of those boys!! "N" took a little while to warm up, but as you can see... once he did, he was all smiles!!! 

Mom and Dad thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to photograph your family! I look forward to watching these sweet babies grow up. Baby "E" is gorgeous!!

I will be in touch with you soon!

Two sisters and their beautiful families.

I had the opportunity to spend some time with the "N" family in our session, and I just want to say that this family "oozes" love! I have known them for a few years and they are as beautiful inside as they are on the outside.

Thank you so much "N" family for giving me the opportunity to capture this moment in time for your family! I will be calling you soon to show you the rest of the pictures from our session.

Distracted by Facebook...

I cannot believe that it has been 11 days since I blogged! My free time I used for blogging before has been taken over by Facebook. :)

You guys know that I am not one for many words, but I am ALWAYS one for many pictures. This post will be no different. I have MOPS convention, SYTYCD tour show, and kids to share with you. LOTS of pictures!

Twitch and Kherington

Katee and Joshua (my favorite couple!)

The Finale

Will and Jessica (Will was my favorite dancer of all!)

Gev and Courtney

Twitch

Mark and Chelsie

Twitch and Katee

Joshua and Chelsie

Mark and Chelsie

Will- AMAZING DANCER!!

Best Friends

My sweet Grace...she is getting soooo big.

Go Fish performed at the MOPS Convention in Dallas, TX

Plumb...if you haven't heard her music, go to iTunes NOW!! "Me" is my favorite song!

New paint, new furniture, same old toy mess. :)

Remember long before Hurricane Ike....

I told you I was painting my house....

Well I finally have some pictures for you.

And because we had all that time to spend sitting in the house together, we decided to get some new furniture. Here are some to start with, but remember it takes me a LONG time to decorate!! :)

Here is the breakfast room, it used to be a baby blue. That is some new artwork on the wall. We will get to that later. 

Here is the view of the living room, with the new furniture. 

(and the new  TV)

Here are some really cool shutter doors that are going on the wall somewhere. 

My pretty rustic red dining room. The downstairs bathroom is the same color. (This color is my favorite!!!)

Here is that metal art from the kitchen. I think I am going to get two more, because that space needs something larger.

Here is another view of the living room. That chair to the left of the fireplace is my new "sitting" chair. I LOVE it!!

Here is the kids playroom, right side. 

That is our new train set, courtesy of the Boys and Girls Country garage sale last weekend. And who is that rugrat over there on the table?? Can you see him??

Anna's new paint color in her room.

The other side of the kids playroom. That furniture is the old stuff from downstairs.

More pictures from our weekend with Ike

I had to laugh at my sweet hubby for this one! Putting aluminum foil on the antenna's brought back such memories!! 

See those two on the right bottom corner?? That is Ammie and Ubba down in Kemah taking pictures before the storm hit. 

Go home you lunatics!!!

We had Grace on one side of the closet...

and Anna and Joshua on the other.

Here are our sweet babies trying to put the trees back up.

September 12, 2008~Hurricane Ike

Hello to all of my friends!

What a wild weekend we have had, and I don't think it will be over anytime soon. Due to the hurricane school has been cancelled for the entire week!! Our neighborhood faired pretty well, but the school district has quite a few schools that have damage. 

I guess I will start from the beginning...

Thursday we finished up preparations by getting the generator (see previous post) and going home to "hunker down." All of the men on the street were helping each other take trampolines down, tie down basketball goals, put patio furniture away, etc. 

We stayed out late to watch the sunset and let the kids run out of all their energy! (Isn't it amazing how they can tell something big is about to happen? They all go nuts!) When they finally crashed (at 11:00pm), we sat in the living room to get situated before the rain started. I don't even remember what time that was, but it was dark. I tried to get good shots of the rain and wind, but it was close to impossible. Rodney kept getting on me to shut the door or else! Sheesh! I needed to get good pictures for you guys!

The power went out at about 1:12am. Right after Joshua fell out of my bed and I snuggled up next to him to keep it from happening again. I had just started a movie and was really bummed when it turned it off!!

Instead of rolling over to go to sleep, I jumped out of bed because I knew we had to finally get the kids in the closet. (oops, I forgot those pictures!! I will do another post with just pictures.) We put everyone into our final "hunker down" mode and caught a little cat nap at about 3am until 5am when Rodney slapped me on my arm and told me to get in the closet!! There was a tornado that went through the park beside our house. (you could see the path it took)

That was the last thing I remember. 

I went into the closet and it was AMAZINGLY quiet in there!! I slept until around 8am when Rodney woke me up looking for Anna. I freaked out for a moment and then realized she was in the living room looking out the window at the storm. That was it... all the kids started waking up and a few hours later the worst of the storm had passed. 

I am a horrible writer, so I will stop there and just share my pictures.

A storm band rolling in. Here comes Ike!

Our AMAZING gift from God the evening before the storm.

Just look at the beauty our Lord creates!

Yep.. that's a storm band right over my house!

That is my house over there to the left. These are more clouds rolling in.

Yes, I was trying to get artsy when the lights went out. What else was I supposed to do?

This is from my front porch very early on in the storm. 

This is the park just when the rain began. Remember this view, because it looks very different after the storm.

This is our back yard and that is what you do with a trampoline in a hurricane. (there are stakes on all sides that it is tied down to.)

This is a hanger at a little airport just down the road.

I am getting very used to this now. There are so many gas stations controlling traffic with police patrol. People are getting very ugly!

This is my sweet friend Ashley's house. :( She was very sad to see her tree down, but I am happy to say that it is back up again!!) 

This is just one of the trees from the picture before. There are so many in the park that looked like this! They were only planted a couple of years ago. I really hope they make it!

Here is a building off the Beltway that had windows blown out.

After we got our power back, we decided to take our generator to some friends in Clear Lake. We saw dozens of busses and emergency vehicles taking people from the island to San Antonio or Austin.

A mangled stoplight.

This tree went down just down the street from our friends. (love you B and C!) The kids are there just so you could see how big it was. 

A car dealership on I-45.

The crazy line at Krogers for gasoline on the day after. (didn't everyone get the message to fill up before the storm??)

This is a HUGE tree down at the park in front of our neighborhood.

Same tree, different angle. This one shows the soccer fields that double as retention ponds for our neighborhood. The work very well!! No flooding here!

Isn't this cool?? This flag got hung up on the tree sometime during the storm. This is one of my favorite pictures. I haven't done final editing, but when I do I think I might print this one. 

We brought the camper over on Saturday night to get some cool air. We ended up having a few neighbors over for a slumber party in the cul de sac.

Here are the men working on the generator. 

Here is my baby girl working on clean up after the storm. 

Here are our menfolk working on getting a huge limb of the tree. The limb broke and got stuck on that huge branch right above their heads. 

 

Here are the men again. They finished the park by our house and then took their chainsaws around the neighborhood. When they finally got to this tree they figured out they had been beat. Rodney thought for a moment his hacksaw would do the job (not really), and then they all went home for some well deserved rest!

Well there it is!! I will post the other pictures tomorrow night. I am going to bed feeling very blessed tonight! There are still so many people without electricity and homes at all!!