Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Readying for Ike and babies babies babies
Exciting, huh? Another post already. Well, I took some pictures this morning and realized Danielle took some pictures of us getting ready for good old Ike. We didn't get any after pictures at our house or Jay and Danielle's after Ike.
This wasn't the start of the picture taking. This is when Danielle
realized we should take some
pictures. I am so glad she went in and got my camera and took some. The scary part was over by now...thankfully. We have a little really steep front porch and it was extremely tough for Jay and Mike let alone us on the ground. They got it done and all was well. In these first few pictures the guys are on the roof of the garage putting
a board on one of the spare bedroom windows. They thought this was a much easier thing to do than the front porch. As you can see from the smiles on their faces. We only got a few pictures of putting up these boards, because as you go around to the back of the house it is a little tricky again. 
It took all of us to do this crazy house. Mike and Jay took turns putting up the boards and sometimes Jay did a few more than Mike, but we did get it all done.These boards are really heavy and we got the 1/4 inch ones. They recommend the 5/8 inch ones. As Mike said, "We will never get the 5/8 inch ones on the upper windows for
sure." He was right. A little too much of a breeze, too.Now here on your left is our professional board cutter. She has the drill in her hands at the moment, but she only does a couple of the screws. Her main job turned out to be sawing the boards while the guys rested in between windows. I got to be an assistant while she was
cutting the boards, by standing on one end so it wouldn't move. LOL!!As you can see Jay is on the ladder and I get to hold it in place, too. My other job. Sometimes it was hard to hold especially when they were balancing a board up there.
When it was time to take all of this down Mike and I did it. I actually got to unscrew some boards from the house. We do have 16 windows in this house of ours, so we thought we ought to board up. Taking down was easier.
This morning I heard the ducks coming. They make their whistling noise I call and squawking noise. I hurried to watch them fly in. I was looking for the babies. They have just started coming with the parents and a few others. The parents don't let any of the other adult ducks eat out of the same feeder the babies are eating out of. The ducks with 
the black bills are the babies. The one to the far right of the first picture is a baby. Actually all of them in that picture are babies except for the one on the far left of the feeder.In the next picture the one in the back with it's head up and with the orange bill and the white on it's wing is the adult. These guys look
like they are the same size and the other adult birds, but they are not. I didn't have a picture of them on the neighbors roof, but when you see them there instead of in the grass you can tell just how much smaller they are. We have one that has a gimp leg. It didn't have it the first time they came, but we noticed it on the
second or third day. Have no clue what happened to it, but today it is able to just touch hold it's leg down in the right position. Previously it could not. It stuck straight out behind him. It is the one in the previous picture in the front of the feeder in the middle. It is holding it's leg just off to the left. It is not the one in the bowl.
Here is the best picture of one of the babies. I can't believe I actually got him all alone. I took this through the back door blinds. It was tricky. Not long after this the cat came and they all flew away. If the babies weren't with them they probably wouldn't have all flown off. They are very protective of these little guys. Well, that is about all that is new around here. Ya'll take care!
Debbie
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Survival
Here are a few pictures of Preston while we had him. Most of them are from the Children's Museum.
Preston milking the cow.
Preston fishing. It was way harder to do than what you did in Bible school or Sunday school when you were a kid.
Preston liked trying on the hats. He was just so fast going from one thing to another it was hard to catch him for a picture.
This was Preston's favorite thing to see. He wasn't overly impressed by what was on the phones at the bottom of this display, but loved what he called the robot. All of these phones were in the shape of a huge robot. I didn't get to get a picture of that. I kept trying to get him and the whole thing in one picture and before I knew it he was off to something else.Hello everyone! Well, this has been an interesting month. Seems we have had a hurricane every two weeks. Of course, if it doesn't come here it goes to Lafayette. Or both. I would say that Gustav wasn't so bad, but he got Lafayette and everything north, south and east of it. The rain and damage was something else there, too. Jon's a/c went out right before the Gustav hit, so even when they got electricity back he was still very hot. He finally got a/c and said it felt great once it cooled down. Ike took away Galveston and the other little islands out there. Ike also went all the way to Canada before he finally gave it up. Ike was more wind than rain for us. Storm surge because of the wind was just awful. I have never seen storm surge and no rain, but we saw it here in the Houston area all over the place. People would be walking in water over knee deep and looking at it rise and there was no rain, yet. It was really weird. Of course, that was long before Ike got on land. Ike went up to East Texas and we have friends all over there. By then Ike had a lot more rain with the winds. I know of a few living in that area that still don't have electricity as a day or two ago. It is no wonder that there are still places here in the Houston area without electricity. We finally got the no boil notice, so you don't have to worry about accidentally drinking the water. We got meat, milk and eggs in our stores just yesterday. People were so happy around here. We also were only out of electricity for about 15 hours. An interesting thing happened yesterday as we were just about ready for supper Mike decided to use the phone. No service on the land line. He tried all of the phones none of them worked. Back to using our intermittent cell phones. They are getting better each day. We start to watch tv and no tv. Mom calls. Has trouble doing something online and is asking questions. No internet for us either. While I am talking to Mom Mike calls the cable company, because all of those things not working are through the cable company. They tell him it will probably be 3 days before it is up and working again. We didn't have any trouble with any of those things until our power went out and when it came back on everything through the cable was working too. Blew our minds that after 4 days everything quit working. Thankfully when we got up this morning everything was working again!
Jay and Danielle got in there house no long after the reunion I talked about in the previous post. There house is really nice and I think they are loving it. They are always working in the yard or doing something. I think they are loving being out of the apartment life. Our niece, Bethany also got her first house in Austin. She had been living in apartments for a while and was also more than ready to be out of that mode. She seems so happy in her house.
We went to my nephew's wedding in Austin a few weeks ago and we stayed at Bethany's house. We were her first official guests. Jay, Danielle, Mike and I all went together. Reagan and Jill's wedding was short but sweet. We had a really nice time visiting with Bethany and Steve, who happened to be there for the weekend also and getting to see family at Reagan and Jill's wedding.
Preston came home with me when I made a trip to Lafayette a few weeks ago. We had a great time with him. He is a wonderful traveler and he never seemed to miss his parents at all. We kept him four days. It should have only been 3 days, but I happened to get sick on Sunday and wasn't able to take him back to meet Michelle half way till Tuesday. While I was sick all day Sunday starting in the wee hours of the morning Mike and Preston had a great time together. I could hear them every time I woke up. They would be downstairs and I could hear them upstairs. Every now and then Preston would escape his Pop's attention and get upstairs before he knew it. Preston would come into my room and visit a bit. Mike after the first time knew where he was sneaking off to. I don't think Mike has been up and down the stairs that much since we got moved in. Before I got sick we took Preston to the Children's Museum. He had a great time. There were so many kids there he couldn't be still trying to keep up. He will really understand a lot more in a year or two, but we can always go back many times over the years. We had a great time with Preston and can't wait for him to visit again.
Well, that is about all I have for now.
Debbie
