Coming Soon

Sorry I haven't posted since I returned; I have been back home since Wednesday evening. At the moment, I need to get up off my expanding butt and clean my house but I promise I will post soon.

Ike in a nutshell

We are fine. Our house is fine. I hope that you never have to evacuate or a hurricane hits your town. The day we left our home, I saw a side of human nature I never care to see again. People were rude, aggressive, and just overall scary. There were huge lines for anything useful, gas shortages, and erratic drivers. This was before the storm even hit.

It was a very surreal experience packing up our stuff and wondering if this is that moment. You know, when you ask yourself if you had to grab just one thing, what would it be. So I grabbed Matt's photo albums, a box of photos, our Bibles, and some of Matt's favorite things. Obviously I packed clothes and necessities.

We drove to my mom's and watched FOX news for about three days straight. I must say, Geraldo added some much needed laughter the night the hurricane rolled in. My mother in law and I were cracking up watching him. While laughing, I told her I was glad we could find humor somewhere.

After the storm, we spoke to our neighbors and learned that our neighborhood fared well. Most people, including ourselves, lost fences and had a lot of limbs in the yard but no major damage. Power is STILL out and our water pressure was low for a while. Richard went home today for the first time and said we lost a couple of gates, had some damage to our chimney, and gutters. Overall, not much considering the eye passed over us. We are very blessed and thankful.

At the moment I am in Minnesota with my mom and Matt at my brother and sister in laws. I will blog more about that later. For now, I will just say we are having a blast and am glad to be in a new location.

**I owe a huge thanks to my mom and David for housing us and our cat for a week!
THANK YOU!

Ike! Yikes!

We are boarding up and evacuating today because of the hurricane. It is going to hit too close to home. Please keep us and all the people affected by this hurricane in your prayers. I will update when I can. Please pray that our travels to north Texas will be relatively easy. Love all of you!

In case you were wondering

This morning I was in the car listening to the radio and had one of those moments. You know, the kind where you feel like God is speaking directly to you.

I was listening to a local Christian station and they were previewing an upcoming segment about what makes you the perfect parent for your child. Of course I had thoughts like setting up college savings, preschool, reading stories 24/7, and other "earthly" qualities.

Then the segment aired and the woman said the reason why you are the perfect parent for your child is God chose you for the job. He knew your talents and abilities and chose you to be your child's parent.

As parents, I believe we all have those moments of doubt and question. I know I do. I constantly ask myself what in the world am I doing or doubt my abilities as a mother. Richard and I frequently have conversations about how we are raising Matt and wonder if we are doing a good job. I know there is always room for improvement but it was comforting to hear those words. To know that God chose me to be Matt's mother.

So in case you were wondering, He chose you too!

What Can I Say?

A better title might be "All By Myself".

This morning Matt put on his own underwear. He put them on backwards. Then Matt started his own DVD video. He watched it in Russian.

What else can I say?

The moment was priceless, we laughed hysterically, and I fell in love with my son all over again.

A Little Bit of This and That

Remember that old show, The Naked Chef, on the Food Network with Brit, Jamie Oliver. Matt is the new version. He actually has shorts on but when I saw this photo that title popped into my head.

The next group of pictures represent how big of a mess Matt can make if you don't keep a leash on him. Let us begin at the kitchen table; this is where it all began. This mess includes Mega Blocks, Dora and Diego Lego's, an army jeep, and some random pieces of paper. Somehow, he played with all of this together.

Next, we have the staging area for "Peoples". He moved on to this area when he woke up from his nap. What you cannot see is the large bucket of peoples dumped out in front of the hearth.

Finally, we have his red table which he drug from another part of the room and set in the middle of the living room. He then decided to play with wooden blocks and his animal vet kit at the same time.

Typically, I am an anal mother and make him cleanup after each set of toys. On this day I had the "what the heck"mentality and let him go nuts. I forgot to show you a pic of him room. That one was a doozey as well. Needless to say, he had a fun day and he did help clean it all up in the end.

One last thing, Matt learned a new phrase from watching the RNC last night: USA, USA, USA!

He thought it was hilarious when they chanted the phrase. He would randomly (are you surprised) chant it while he was playing with his blocks. What a good little Republican :)

Politics

I am not sure I should even go down this road, but here I go.

So last night was the RNC and, unless you are living on the moon, you know that Gov. Sarah Palin spoke. How many of you watched the speech? I did and was blown away.

I am usually not a very "political" person. I have my views and will occasionally antagonize a certain Democrat friend for good fun but, in general, I would not call myself a political junkie. Well, ever since Friday's announcement, that has changed. I find myself listening and reading any information I can about Gov. Palin, the good and the bad. I have been shocked at how personal the attacks have been against her, namely her family and mothering abilities. I am not surprised; the mainstream media is so biased it is unreal. That's a discussion for a whole other day.

Anyways, for the most part, I have been very impressed by what I have seen/heard. I appreciate the fact she is a mother and has conservative social values. I applaud her for standing up to corruption and taking on the establishment. One of the things I most appreciated about her speech last night was when she addressed the parents of special needs children. As most of you know, I was a special ed teacher and it is exciting to think there could be a powerful and high profile advocate for these children and families in Washington.

I am not going to write in great length about this. I just wanted to share a few thoughts.

By the way, just to keep it fair, I did watch the DNC last week. I even made the comment to Richard after it was over that it was pretty exciting and I was not really looking forward to watching the RNC. I figured it was going to be the same old stuff. Thanks Senator Mc Cain, I am glad you proved me wrong.

Bring on the debates!