Thanksgiving

My mom and dad came down from Oklahoma for Thanksgiving. What is most memorable to me is that this was my first week off from work and I loved it! We started off the week with a soccer tournament in Lewisville and it was cold!! we stayed at a great hotel-our room was a suite and we had a blast!! After the tournament I drove to Okla. left the kids with my parents and headed home.

That week, I had a spot compression mammogram...ok, that hurts!! The regular mammo is ok, but the spot comopression...oh my!! I ahd the extra test because there was problem with my original test. Praise the Lord that everything was ok!!

School time fun

Here is Cat and a few classmates posing after casting their votes. We set up a little polling place, complete with a private booth and an official checking their records at the door. The kids loved it and felt very grown-up! By the way McCain won by a large margin!!

Next came our annual Thanksgiving celebration. The kids made some kind of popcorn treat, shaped it like an ear of corn and then chowed down!

My mom made indian outfits for both kids...they looked great! Here is "Squanto" the female version! Our kindergartners performed a little play for everyone. Catherine...I mean Squanto had the line "Your corn will grow better with this" as she held out a fish for the Pilgrims.

My mom also made me a totally cool Pilgrim outfit...unfortunately I could not fit into it...the bodice was soooo tight. Fortunately the other K teacher had an extra dress that I could wear so it worked out OK.

Curious George's visit

In November Curious George came to our house for a weekend visit. Here is Cat with daddy and George by our bon-fire, waiting for the hotdogs to cook.

George didn't get into trouble during the night...he slept soundly by Cat's side

The next morning George joined us for church...I think they both listened somewhat intently!

But, being true to his name...he was rather curious about somethings at Wal-mart...we have plenty of other pictures of him getting into other trouble as well...Cat was a good girl and helped him learn a little self-government!!

I think she has the Mommy look and finger pointing down!!

In the Fall Calixto and I took off for a weekend to Austin. We went to 2 conferences in 1 weekend. The first was "Desiring God's" regional conference which was about the suffering of the Righteous. Then, we went to a missions conference, entitled "A Purpose Driven Death"...quite heavy topics!! The speakers were incredible and we got a photo op and face time with John Piper! Such a humble man of God!

It was a nice get-away and we even found a delicious Thai restaurant which we absolutely loved!!

I guess I'll pick up where I left off...back in October '08...Here we are at Roadhouse celebrating Christopher's 11th birthday!

Our Southern Flying Squirrel

Here is our flying squirrel (or as I said as a child "squill"). Calixto rescued him from our cat who had brought him up to the porch to play with. Unfortunately he/she was hurt worse than we thought and she died the next night. She was the cutest thing!! We were all very sad when we woke up the next morning and found her dead! I understand they make great pets...wish I knew where the nest was...I'd go snatch another one!!

We've tried to rescue little critters only twice and both times they didn't make it...guess we aren't so good as rescuing critters!!

Happy 11th Birthday to my handsome son!!!!

Soccer and the Fair

The girls...Cat and Kayleigh at the Christopher's soccer game. I never even try to get action shots of the game...they never turn out good. Another mom was taking pics with a nice camera and lense...I'm hoping she got some of him playing goalie.

After the game "talk" with the coach...no one was happy! They are a good team but, they were not playing very well that day! Maybe they were nervous for their 1st real game. They played much better when they scrimmaged boys a year older then them a few weeks ago! Hopefully, they will win this Saturday...go Titans!!

Here we are at the Fair...in the convention center they had this petting zoo with Llamas, goats, a kangaroo-or that other animal like a kangaroo-I can't think of the name of it now. We really went inside because it was still so hot outside...once the sun went down it was a very pleasant evening.

We all went on the ferris wheel...I'll just pretend I don't know how much the tickets were for it b/c I would kick myself for going on it!! But, we all did enjoy the ride!

Cat and I went to the "Child Evangelism Fellowship" trailer to hear a story...sadly the story teller that we heard was not really very good...they have different people volunteer to tell the 15 minute story...I'm sure others were very good. After hearing the gospel presentation she was able to get her face painted and get a shaped balloon.

Of course what is a "Texas" fair without a giant turkey leg? They were delicious and hot off of the grill!

Even Cat enjoyed chompin' down on the giant leg!!

What a cutie! She had a blast on this roller coaster...she squeeled with delight and raised her arms above her head as it went up and down the tracks...that's our little thrill seeker!

Well...I'm another year older! My kindergartners celebrated my birthday on Friday and I was overwhelmed with their gifts!! They were so very excited to give me their presents...they could hardly contain themselves! We had cupcakes at snacktime and I think they sang to me several times throughout the day! They are such blessings!!
My birthday was on Saturday so we went to IHOP for breakfast. My kids could not contain themselves from telling our waitress it was my birthday and so the entire wait staff sang to me and brought me a hot fudge sundae! I would have appreciated the ice cream if it weren't breakfast time...but the gesture was appreciated! Catherine certainly appreciated it! Later that day we went to Christopher's first soccer game. He played goalie for the entire game and they lost 0-1, hopefully they'll do better next week, they were very "off" their game. Since we were in Tyler, we decided to go to the East Texas fair. We had a fun evening together...Catherine deemed it the best day ever!!
I had a terrible headache all day, actually all weekend which was a bummer!
Ok, rest time is almost over...I have to get back to work. I have little time to read blogs and I really miss it...

Hurricane Ike

At 4pm on Saturday we lost our power. Calixto and Christopher were at church helping with the Spanish speaking evacuees, they came home around 5 since our power was out. By 6:30 the winds died down so we went for a drive to check out local damage. We ended up stopping at a Whataburger that had power. We were in the drive through line for 50 minutes!! 50 minutes!! I couldn't believe it...but, never have I tasted such a good burger in my life!! We were starving! Afterward, we came home and camped out on the living room floor, ate brownies and ice cream (before it melted) while we watched a movie on the laptop. The battery died before the end of the movie but we had a fun evening together. It didn't get too hot in the house until just before morning.

The whole next day I just cleaned the house, did lesson plans and picked up fallen sticks in the yard. The kids had a blast playing outside with our neighbors the entire day while Calixto went out to help church families with fallen trees. The weather was absolutely beautiful and we enjoyed the slow pace of the day. I wasn't able to drive anywhere since my car was locked in the garage. The day before I cleared out a space, pulled the car in and closed the "electric" door...not thinking that we don't have a door to walk through (it's an old garage!) so...lesson learned...leave one of the garage doors accessible to open w/o electricity!!
I was really hoping school would be cancelled the next day but, the school had power and so it wasn't cancelled! Our power came back on by 8:30 Sunday night and I was able to have everything ready for Monday!!

Hurricane Ike damage

We only lost one tree-actually 3 trees in 1-in our empty lot on Jewell street. The 1st picture is looking toward Jewell street the tree snapped off the telephone pole bringing the transformer down on the ground. Incredibly it didn't take out our wooden fence, it just opened the gate!

Here is a view from the empty lot looking toward our house...

The trees are right next to the property line and look like they belong to the neighboring house...

Here you can see how the roots ripped up their concrete driveway...the house on the left of the picture had their electric wires/box torn away from the house. Their electric was restored on Tuesday I think. This didn't effect our electricity just the neighbors on that street. Thank the Lord it fell in the direction it did, if it fell the other way it would have completely destroyed the house just to the right!

Tornado, hail and now a hurricane...Anymore of this and we won't have any trees left!! We are grateful that we didn't have more damage than we did!! There are many people in Longview that had some pretty significant damage.

The electricity is finally back on after 28 hours! Thank you Lord!!