Friday, September 19, 2008

Sensitive side

Yesterday Dylan showed me his sensitive side. The movie Air Bud was on The Disney Channel and for all of you who haven't seen the movie here is a short recap of what happens. A boy finds a dog and the dog's mean owner comes and takes him back. The boy goes and steals the dog back. He then forces the dog to be free so that the bad man can't come and take him back. Well, when that happened Dylan got up off the couch and drooped his head and started for the stairs. I said, "Dylan what's wrong?" He responded by running up to his bed and covering himself with a blanket. When I got up to him he was bawling his eyes out. I asked him if he wanted to come and watch the rest of the movie he said, "NO!! I don't like that movie!" I reassured him that the dog would probably come back and find the boy, but he wasn't hearing it. So, I gave him big reassuring hug and went down stairs to wait for the dog to come back to the boy. In the meantime, Dylan was sobbing loudly and very emotionally. I called him to come down when it was a happier part of the movie, and he did so reluctantly. Fortunately it was a happy ending and the boy got to keep the dog. It was all I could do not to giggle at him, but it was sooo sweet. Who knew my big boy was such a softy.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Plastic Plate

This is what 375 degrees does to a plastic plate!! Just in case you were wondering. Before

After

(oops my bad)

Ike Day 4

Well, we went home and had no electricity. Fortunately for us a cold front was coming through and so we decided that we would stay the night at home. We gave the boys a nice romantic snack and bath by flashlight,


and went to bed with the windows open just waiting for the cold front. We didn't know how hot or cold it would be so we dressed Kolton in cool jammies as opposed to the night before when it was sooo hot he had to sleep in only a diaper. It actually cooled off so much that I had to get up and close most of the windows. The weather men were saying that this is the most important cold front Houston has ever had; seeing as how 2.5 million people are without power.

We were praying that when we woke up there would be power, but no such luck. We did however wake to a beautiful day with quite a chill in the air (at least by Texas standards). Dustin got a call from some friends to come and help them remove the tree from their backyard. So, we headed over to the Zentz's house. When we arrived luckily for Dustin the tree was already done so we just hung out and enjoyed their company. Our kids love to go over there because they have 4 ginormous dogs.
Later we decided to go back to Dustin's work and the boys found ways to entertain themselves for several hours.


Later that day we went on a tour of our side of town to survey the damage. Come to find out the main road outside our neighborhood had major damage and power lines down; which would explain why we had no power.


We thought for sure that we would not be getting power for weeks, but then much to our surprise the lights came on Monday night at about 8 pm. We are very happy to have electricity.
Now life is pretty much back to normal for us, but they have canceled school for Dylan for the rest of the week. Which he is pretty bummed out about.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Hurricane Ike Day 2 & 3

Well, we put the boys to bet about 9:30 on Friday night and we had not a lick of rain, but that would not last for long. The eye of the Hurricane came a shore at midnight and that was when we started to get the outer bands (1 1/2 hours a way) . We continued to get pound with sustained winds of 60-80 mph and wind gusts of up 116 mph and of course all the rain you could handle until 10 am on Saturday morning. The eye of the storm passed a few miles east of us so we stayed in the eye wall for a very long time and never got a break. Needless to say I didn't get very much sleep that night, but the boys (Dustin included) all slept just fine. The power went out at 3 am and has been out since. When the winds died down and we could look around a little we were quite pleased with what little damage our street had recieved.

We ventured outside just to get some relief from the stale air of the house.


We also went to a friends house to check on them. Leslie Zents (Haines).

The tree missed their master bedroom by about one foot, which they were alseep in. I guess the good Lord was looking out for them. Come to find out the rest of our neighborhood did not fair so well either. We decided that night that we should start to eat some of our food from the freezer so we ate a good meal (seriously) and took a walk to see what was going on.

That's a trampoline in the lake!

Dylan told us that night "This subdivision was such a perfect place...until the hurricane." We had a good laugh and tried to explain to him that things will start to look better soon but I am not sure how much he understood. When we got home we had another camp out in our bedroom. Dylan laid down and watched a movie on the Ipod, Dustin and I watch a movie on the portable DVD player (or atleast until the battery ran out), Hayden and Kolton fell fast asleep. We had a hot and muggy night.
Day 3
I awoke in the middle of the night to a big thunder storm and had to close the windows in our room because we were getting rained on. The house got hotter, but don't worry all the boys still slept just fine. When morning came we still had no electricity, and decided that we should eat as much breakfast as possible before it spoiled. We invited over some friends and ate like kings. We had a dozen eggs, a dozen and half pancakes, a pound of bacon, a couple containers of yogurt and a half a gallon of milk. We were soo full. We then found out that Dustin's work had power and we decided that we would take our food up there and store it. When we got there Dustin's boss had already beat us to it, but they have a comercial ice maker and we put our food in there. Now we are just sitting at his office allowing the kids to play, watching TV and surfing the web. Oh and most importantly enjoying the A/C. Perhaps the hightlight of our time at the office was Hayden having the mother of all accidents in his pants, which didn't stay there very long because we are trying to keep him in underwear as much as possible. I had to use the outside water house and spray him down, needless to say he is not in underwear (or pants) at the moment. He looks pretty funny running around in a diaper and a tshirt.

Obviously Kolton is enjoying himself too.
I supose in a couple of hours we will head home and pray we have electricity.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Hurricane Ike - Day 1

So, how has our hurricane been so far? Today we wake up to bright blue skys and beautiful sunshine. We decided that we should clear out the backyard which was just fine with the boys, because that ment that the seesaw came INSIDE.




Then they went outside and rode bikes for a while.






We thought that it was best to save the food at our house in case we need it later (any excuse to eat out). So, we went out too lunch at our favorite pizza joint (Cici's) with some friends and ate ourselves into a stupor.



Then we thought it was best to let the boys get some energy out. So, we went to the neighborhood park and played for quite some time.



Hayden had a great time even though he pooped his pull-up and then sat in the swing for 20ish minutes proceeding to squish the poop up and out the back of his pants into the swing and onto the ground. Needless to say that made a big mess of him and put an end to our trip to the park. So, we went home and promptly gave Hayden a bath. The boys then proceeded to play outside for another 4 hours. Our block basically turned today into a hurricane block party!! It was a little cloudy, a little windy (which felt pretty nice), but not a lick of rain. YET. We did have a flicker of the power a few moments ago, though. We are expected to get 90 mph winds but we should just barely be on the clean side of the storm, which is good news for us. The boys are actually quite enjoying the whole thing. I mean what's not to like; no work for Daddy, playing with friends, out to lunch, more playing with friends, staying up late, watching movies movies movies (as long as we have power)and to top it all off a camp out on Mommy and Daddy's floor!!





Thursday, September 11, 2008

yIKEs


It looks like I spoke too soon yesterday and things have changed drastically. We are now in the direct path of Hurricane Ike, which is expected to make landfall late Friday night/early Saturday morning at a 3 or a 4 in strength. It is so crazy here many gas stations are out of gas, the stores are out of water, the shelves are bare and the lines still seem to be miles long. Schools are closed and so is Dustin's work. At least none of us will have to be out on the streets fighting the madness. So, please keep us in your prayers and we'll keep praying too.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

What's up

So, what have we been up to since the last blog? Well, Dylan has now been in school for 2 1/2 weeks, but I have a good story about the first day he took the bus to school. We waited outside for the bus and when it came Dylan hugged us all and happily got on the bus. The bus went down the street and all was not well. Hayden ran after the bus, chased it down the street and around the corner for quite a ways so I had to chase him down. When I finally got him to stop he just collapsed on the curb, cried his eyes out and refused to come back home. I had to carry him the whole way back. The neighbors who were outside got quite a kick out of it. Hayden proceeded to cry at home for another 30 minutes, all in all it was a pretty sad moment for me. Hayden has since learned to deal with the fact that Dylan is going to school, but he is so very excited to him when the bus comes in the afternoon.




I am sure that everyone who came to visit in August is wondering how "the hole" is coming? Well, Dustin is very proud of himself (I've never heard him brag so much). It is done, with NO outside intervention other than the neighbor routing the corners of the bottom board. The boys love it and everyone who comes over thinks it is the coolest thing ever.
It is now affectionately known as "the clubhouse".



So, what's going on nowadays in our lives... We are just praying that we get bypassed by all of the hurricanes that keep coming into the gulf. Which it looks like we will have another near miss this weekend. WHEW! Dylan is loving school and starting to become a little obsessed with gymnastics, Hayden is making great strides in the potty training area (3 days no accidents), and Kolton is growing bigger and smiling tons. Dustin is just trying to recover from all of the manual labor he did in the club house and I have just begun the obsessive process of planning the boys' birthday party and Halloween costumes. I know it is like a month away, but you know that it just has to be perfect.