Fall, Football and a new Favorite

I'm definitely starting to feel the change of the seasons this year. I'm not sure what it is since, here in Texas, we really don't see much of a transition from Summer to Fall. Maybe it's slightly cooler weather right now. Maybe it's the football games. But, I think it's mostly from the excitement building up to the 2nd annual Mother-Daughter weekend coming up in a few days! You may remember that last year our trip was to Savannah, Georgia. This year, we (me, Mom, Sarah, Mrs. Edwards, Kimberly and Elizabeth) are going to Asheville, North Carolina. I'm super excited about seeing trees with leaves that change colors and touring the Biltmore Estate. So excited that I made a special trip to Hobby Lobby to buy some Fall decorations for the house. I made this arrangement for the living room last night for less than $50. Feel free to oooohhh and aaaaahhh over it for a moment....

Yesterday also brought another flag football game. Caleb was somewhat frustrated last week, but after several discussions about playing as a team and trying your best, he did much better yesterday. Caleb was chosen to be one of the "team captains" for the day and Cole worked on perfecting his skills as Nana and Pop's personal water boy. Best of all, our team won! It was a very exciting game as we came from behind to win within the last few seconds 19-18!!! Go Broncos White! (We are all Broncos...each team wears a different version of the Denver Broncos jerseys)




And, in the last of my latest news, I think I've determined a new "favorite" in my life. After the storm, everyone's most favorite truck to see on their street was that of the electric company. This week brought our SECOND favorite truck...the large trash truck. Work is still in progress, but I'm hoping the large pile of dead fence currently killing my grass will soon be removed.

Some Post-Ike pictures

I'm slowly starting to return to "normal" after all of the Post-Ike chaos. Although things are starting to look up around here, we still have the constant reminder of the storm when we look at the piles of "large debris" that still clutter our streets and the pockets of neighborhoods that are STILL without power. Football games have started again (both Caleb's and high school). I actually drove down to Texas City at Hwy. 146 the other day and really wish I would have taken the camera with me. Boats, jet-skis, furniture and large trash are just pushed aside on the interstate. STILL. It's really a sad sight...to know that homes were utterly destroyed and lives were changed forever. School starts back on Monday, so that will help things a lot. I was uploading pictures earlier, so I thought I would share what we saw on our return home after the storm. Obviously, these don't even touch on the devastation south of us. For those of you local, Chris started taking pictures (I was driving at this point) at Hwy. 90 and Beltway 8 - as that was where we started to see the most damage.



At FM 2351 - coming in to Friendswood from I-45:

Waiting in line for gas in our neighborhood:




Our neighbor's tree - it damaged their patio cover, but spared the home:

Our back fence laying on the ground (day care fence still standing some 3 feet away)- thank GOD that was the worst of our damage:


And here are the boys enjoying some fine hurricane cuisine - barbequed spaghettios by flashlight. Sorry for the "redneck-ness" of this picture, but remember we had no electricity and that cool front hadn't quite hit us yet...

Yes! We are alive!!!

We got back home late last Sunday to very little damage. We have been without electricity until last night. Thankfully, Chris' mom found a generator for us and we met her half-way to pick it up along with about 125 gallons of gas and 200 pounds of ice. If you know me, I'm not the camping type, so I think I've fulfilled my camping requirements for at least several years. We are still in the process of cleaning up - we lost our back fence and there is a little roof damage over our patio. Now that the lights are on, I can actually see what a mess my house has become in the past week! I thank God daily that we were spared in this storm. We feel totally blessed that our community suffered minimal damage and enjoyed a rare cool front during the time we didn't have electricity. We still won't return to school until the 29th, as several of our campuses within the district had major damage. Please pray for the communities only minutes away from us...Galveston has suffered a tremendous loss.

Leaving town

Just wanted to let everyone know that we will be gone for a few days. In anticipation of Hurricane Ike, we are under mandatory evacuation starting at noon today (Thursday). Chris is at the store presently finalizing some stuff and I'm here bathing the dog and packing up our important stuff.