The rains came down and the floods came up

One of the reasons we bought our house is this beautiful creek that runs through the back of our propriety. It is a dream for little kids. They can play, get dirty, and find reptiles. Then I make then stand out side, strip down, and run for the bath. Well, two weeks ago the creek wasn't so awesome. About 12:15 am Jeremy was sitting at the table working on his dissertation(the one time it has paid off to work 15 hours days). All of the sudden his feet felt wet. He thought that a pipe in the house had broken, but no such luck. He looked around and noticed water was coming in through most of the walls in the house. I was awakened by Jeremy calling up stairs saying "the house is flooding." I got up and did the only logical thing I could think of at 12:15 am, get some towels to soak up the water. I arranged them by the door thinking I had resolved the problem. In about 2 minutes the towels were floating in an inch of water. The fire department came to evaluate this situation. They were afraid that they might have to evacuate the neighborhood. After about 20 minutes the waters receded and we think that the creek got dammed up some where. We called our dear friends who let us sleep at their house helped vacuum out water, and rip carpets out. After sleeping for 3 hours we came home and found the damage was not as bad as we imagined. We ran ripped off baseboards, ran fans and dehumidifiers for 72 hours. Yesterday we got new carpet and baseboards installed. Through this I am amazed at peoples kindness and concern. Several people from church were at our house first thing in the morning. We also had FEMA and someone from the Governors office stop by to see the damage. Thank you to all of our friends how helped, called, cooked, and opened their houses to us. This is a picture of the kids room. I will post updated pictures soon.

First Day of school

Aubrey started 1st grade and Isaac started a prek program at the school. I can't believe that she is in 1st grade. She actually has homework and spelling words. Isaac goes to school everyday in the mornings. A bus comes and picks him up from our drive way. I was a little nervous for him to go all by himself, but he assured me it was fine. Now that I have gotten used to him riding the bus it is like a dream to have one less person to run around.

A scare

A couple of nights ago I put the kids to bed and Isaac got out of bed a couple of times, which is pretty normal. After telling him not to get out of bed again I left the room(Aubrey was sound a sleep at this point). About a 1/2 hour later I went to check on him. I found nothing in his bed. The pillow had been thrown on the floor, the blankets and sheets were also on the floor and there was no little boy in that bed. At this point I started to panic. I went all over the house looking for him and couldn't find him. Then it occurred to me where he was. I love to see things like this!

Texas Wildflowers

One of my favorite times in Texas is the spring. We have beautiful wildflowers that grow everywhere. Often times you can see people pulling over on the side of the freeway to take pictures. This is only one of the many things I will miss about Texas. One of our talented friends took pictures of our family.

One year older and wiser too!

Between March and April 4 out of the 5 people in our family have a birthday.We felt like we were eating cake for a whole month. Isaac kicked it off with a pirate party. I can't believe he is 4 already. I brought some treats into class for Isaac's birthday and the class sang to him. When his real birthday came he was insistent that he already had his birthday and he was not going to have another one until after Christmas. He was so determined it wasn't his birthday that he wouldn't even smile when they sang to him at Texas Roadhouse. We should have played along and saved his presents for next year=) Isaac is one of the giggliest kids I have ever met. He giggles at just about anything. He brings lots of fun into our home.

Round two

We had our second round of concussions followed by emergency room visits on Monday night. I feel like I am a veteran at the emergency room. While we were at Sam's club Isaac feel out of the shopping cart and landed on his head. He feel pretty hard and could not stay awake. We took him home and he started throwing up(This is the number one sign that you need to go to the emergency room. Just in case you every have this lovely experience) Isaac performed nicely when we walked in. He couldn't stay awake so I brought this lump of a child in my arms to the front desk. After telling them the problem, I woke him up and he started spewing all over. They quickly got him a wheel chair and a room. it was kind of scary when 5 nurses surrounded him and start poking him and hooking him up to all kinds of machines. After 1 cat scan, 1 x-ray of his spine to make sure it was not broken and 4 hours we were cleared to go home. As we were leaving Isaac said,"I love this place. They have the tastiest blue Gatorade. Can we come back?" To which I told him that I would buy him blue Gatorade and we don't need to go to the hospital for it. As an added bonus Isaac also pick up the stomach flu while we were at the hospital.

Thanks for our dear friends who came over and put Aubrey to bed and stayed at our house until we got home!!!

For those of you who don't know Aubrey feel off the monkey bars at school in November and landed on her head. This was our first concussion experience. Aubrey said that she passed her concussion on to Isaac who is going to pass it on to me and then Jeremy and Nathaniel. I hope that she is wrong.

Rock Star day

Aubrey had rock star day at school so we tried on some different wigs to see what would be best.

PhD program

When people find out that we are in a PhD program with three kids they look at us kind of strange. For the first two years we kind of thought that we were crazy for trying to do it. There have been a couple of time when we felt like throwing in the towel. But, my husband is a hard determined worker. He stays up till all hours of the night and morning working(some times we will it indentured service.) All of his hard work is starting to pay off. He has co-authored a couple of papers. One of his papers made it in the New York times business section. Check out the link.

Christmas pictures

As we were taking down our Christmas decorations I knocked our camera down and broke it. Now that we have a new one I was able to download our Christmas pictures. Perfect timing now that Valentine's day is only two weeks away. This year for Christmas we went to Maryland to spend time with G&G Page. We had a blast getting snowed in the day after we got there. We have turned into Texans and didn't remember what it feels like to be cold. The kids have never seen snow like that and thought that it was pretty great. We also went to the Air and Space Museum, The Museum of Natural History(Aubrey loved the Hope diamond) and the White house.

G&G Page also got us tickets to "Ice" at the Gaylord hotel. It was amazing. They had this tent, which they keep at 9 degrees, with these beautifully carved ice sculptures. The ice sculptures were carved by a team of 40 people from China. Here are some pictures.

Favorite?

We have loved living in Austin. We have made great friends and watched some of them go. We have traveled around Texas...something that I never imaged that I would do. Now that our time is coming to an end...okay we still have 18 months but I know that it is going to go by fast. We are making a list of things that we want to do or see before we leave here. So, for those of you who have lived in Austin I want to know your favorite place, restaurant or thing to do in the Austin area.

My sister-in-law told me that I need to update my blog. This is for you Erica! This summer we got some really great pictures of our family taken and I have just received electronic copies of them.

Changes

Some of you know that I have had a calling which has been time consuming the last couple of years. Well, this Sunday I was released from my calling. It was a bit bitter sweet. I have loved being in primary and with the kids. I have seen many blessings in my life from serving. We have been able to get through almost 4 years of a PhD program(yes, we will be done in 18 months). So, now that I have lots of extra time on my hands, I am going to try and blog more. I can't make any promises though.