Ava's Mom

Yes, we are still here…although you wouldn’t really know it from my lack of posts lately.  Since it is Thanksgiving, I will save you the montage of how busy and crazy we have been.  OK, I’ll just give you the quick version.  After having most of October off, I am back to work.  This time, I am working two back to back study sections so it has been a little chaotic.  Add in the holidays and the girls, and a computer switch-a-roo that has gotten rid of most of my blogging tools…and you have the recipe for only monthly blog posts.    So, there are my excuses.  And, of course I promise to post more often. Now, go have a wonderful Thanksgiving and we’ll see ya back here around Christmas.

Crazy how time flies!  The youngest member of our family (for now) celebrated her first birthday this weekend with lots of decorations, some presents, and of course the sugar-high-inducing frosted cake.  We had a slight mishap when Aunt Ginny’s little pup Peanut (size of the dog matches the name) walked across the cake…but we decided no one really cared and moved on.  It has become a tradition for us to have cake problems at most occasions, so this was simply following in our own footsteps.

I made some little bug cakes to go with her plates and napkins, so we used those too. 

Olivia was so happy to be eating sugar (who can blame her, right)!

She had fun opening presents (with a little help from big sis).

She is really coming into her own personality these days.  Girly-girl, loves new shoes and beads, and anything sparkly and pretty.  She has a quick temper and knows what she wants.  She is strong-willed, independent, and determined, which are great qualities for a little young lady to have I think (although they make parenting difficult, as we are learning from entering the oh-so-monstrous-threes….really people, who coined the term “terrible twos”, were they kidding?  Three is the new terrible-two…on crack!) Olivia is a very sweet little girl.  She loves to get kisses and snuggle.  She is a real ham whenever we are out.  She doesn’t shy away from anyone and is seems to get a kick out of it when people fuss over her at the supermarket or wherever.  If I had to pick one word to describe her at this stage, I would say content.  She is such a content little girl.  As long as she is not hungry, tired, or wanting something immediately beyond her reach, she is content.  She will play and read books on her own, loves to throw balls and run after them, loves to swing, and loves anything musical.   She really loves being in the thick of whatever is going on, but she is content to be part of it;  she doesn’t shy away from any attention but she also doesn’t seem to need to be the center of whatever is happening.  What a great trait to have.  I hope she always feels this way.   It is amazing to watch your little ones grow into their own souls.  So interesting and heart warming and endearing at the same time.  I feel like one of my greatest challenges as a parent is to help our children develop their own strengths and bolster their weaknesses in order to be their best selves, without placing too much of my own bias and self-interpretation in the mix.  Just letting them be who they are, and guiding them in the development of their own individualities, while maintaining fairness and harmony in our household…yikes!    So far, this little one make it easy. Happy Birthday baby girl!

We finally got internet and cable restored, so our home phone works again.  There are still people in the city without power, so we are very fortunate to be back to normal again.  Our neighborhood is cleaning up and the houses that were severely damaged/destroyed have already had contractors in and out.  I have heard that all the families intend to rebuild and stay in their homes! 

Well, here we are one week after Mr. Take-A-Hike-Ike visited the surrounding Houston area.  We have been allowed back up to our neighborhood to start clean up.  We still have no power in the area, businesses are closed, street lights are out, grocery stores and gas stations are limited in supplies if open at all…it is a strange and surreal experience compared to our usual fast paced life.  We still only get local newscasts on the TV, broadcasting only storm recovery news.  It is amazing what we take for granted on a daily basis…water, lights, grocery stores with cold food, restaurants with hot food, sewers, all those little creature comforts that we don’t even think twice about.  Spending a week without them is a reminder that we probably all needed.

We have been SOOOOOOO lucky through this whole experience!  We had a safe place to weather the storm, we have had family to stay with while we were not allowed back into our home, and even now we are being fed and cared for while waiting for our power to come back on.   All of us are safe and sound, and our dear little house is also safe and whole.  We cannot say the same for most of our neighbors, even just one street over…

Here is the tree debris left in our yard.  You can see that some of our fences are down and needed repair.

This is our view from the front door, where our neighbors had a very close call when their giant tree fell.  Thank goodness it went the opposite direction from their house.

This is the view looking down our street after a couple days of clean up where we dragged everything to the curb… Our house is directly to right.

You can see that most of our stuff was tree debris.  Easy clean up.  Thank goodness it didn’t go through our roof, which was the case for many houses in the neighborhood.  Sadly, just one street over, the debris piles were much worst and it is clear that these houses suffered water damage.  There were some houses that had the whole bottom half just ripped apart, gone… I wanted to take some pictures to share, but when the stricken home owners were outside working to salvage what they could it just didn’t feel right to be snapping pictures of their misfortune.  However, you can see even the houses that were left structurally intact suffered greatly.

Our neighborhood pool had some debris too…two boats that got misplaced somehow.

And a little further down the main street, closer to the water…boats were really misplaced. 

Again, we are feeling so, so, so incredibly grateful that our family is safe and sound and our home is intact.  Our hearts go out to our friends and neighbors who are going to need great amounts of strength, time, and resources to get back on their feet.  After listening to the forecasts while the storm was coming into shore, we prepared ourselves to be on the other side of this with nothing left.  To see such damage right next to us makes you feel incredibly grateful and strangely guilty for coming away with such minimal loss.  It is humbling, and a reminder that there by the grace of God go us all.

When we lived in Ohio, the winters were llllllooooooonnnnngggg and gray and depressing. After the holidays were over, you might as well pull the blinds, stuff your face, and take a long nap because you weren’t going back outside for months (the short trek from your car to whatever indoor facility you are visiting does not count as being outside). In the south, the opposite is true. The oppressive heat of the summer takes your breath away and when it is 95 degrees by 11 am, even walks to the park become about as much fun as doing jumping jacks in a sauna. You find yourself spending most of the deep summer indoors, where the hundred percent humidity doesn’t swamp you in sweat the second you walk out the door. So, today when I opened the door to get the morning paper and felt just a tiny hint of fresh, cool air…I really did sing a chorus of Hallelujah. We took full advantage of this little gift. Ate lunch at the park, washed the car in the driveway…come on fall!