This and that

Tom and I went to see Night in Rodanthe this weekend. I like Nicholas Sparks and I really enjoyed The Notebook so I was expecting your typical Sparks fare....romantic tearjerker. Yeah, Tom and I were sniggering like junior high kids through the whole second half of the movie. There was your typical tragic death scene and while people around us sniffled, Tom and I were shaking with laughter. It was so predictable and trite. I was actually sad that we wasted a rare date night on such a film. Oh well, we needed the laugh.

Ellie's teacher informed me last Friday that I was supposed to be bringing big girl underpants for Ellie to wear at school. We went to Target to stock up and off to school she went with a stash of Elmo and Dora panties. I'll admit, I am the laziest potty trainer around. I only sit Ellie on the potty when she begs me and I am not busy doing something else. Despite me, she is doing fairly well.

For those of you that wanted the dirt on Nationwide, don't worry...I'm just waiting until I actually get a check from them before I let loose! We still haven't been able to start any repairs with the house, but word on the street is that we will be getting a new roof over our heads next week. And then it is on to sheetrock, painting, flooring, and more. My goal is to have the house finished by my birthday in two months. Wishful thinking?

Sunday Best (and thoughts)

Earlier this week, my mom called and caught me at a bad moment. I was feeling really frustrated with the house situation and just plain cranky. After listening to me vent, my mom said that I had every right to be cranky because I had certainly had a rough month. She went on to say that when she was experiencing trials, she would stop and ask herself, “What can I learn from this?” I scoffed and asked my mom what I was supposed to learn from having a miscarriage, my dog dying unexpectedly, and a hurricane destroying my house! How could I have prevented any of those things? But after our conversation ended, I kept thinking about what my mom had said. Certainly, she had experienced trials in her life far greater than anything I might be going through. Her question stayed in the back of my mind all week and I kept asking myself what I could learn from my recent run of bad luck. Nothing that I came up with satisfied me until this morning. I found myself with some free time before I needed to leave for church so I picked up a book Sabrina had loaned me. It is the story of a girl in Indonesia whose island was invaded by Japanese soldiers during World War II. As I read, I came to a passage that Sabrina had underlined. It said, “When one turns a bad day into a good day, one develops a strong character and becomes a better person. One needs to go through a bad day to appreciate a good day.” As simplistic as that sounds, it was just the answer I was looking for and something for me to hold onto whenever I find myself asking, “Why me?”

On a different note...I love this picture. Ellie is standing next to a cactus and a wasps' nest and she is carrying two sharp, pointed sticks. It is like an advertisement for bad parenting.

They are not on our side

I just want to start out by saying that I hate Nationwide. I also hate walking around with a scared/sick feeling in my stomach all the time. 'Nuff said.

Moving on to other random stuff. When I went to pick Ellie up from school today, they were having snack time. Her back was to me and I watched as the little boy on her right stole some of her popcorn. When she turned to yell at him, another little boy on her left reached over to take some of her popcorn. This kept repeating until I walked over and told those little hooligans to quit eating her food. It's a jungle out there.

Driving to school this morning, Ellie kept yelling at me to "be careful, mommy" every time I would round a corner. When I was in the line at Chick-fil-A, she would tell me to "watch out for the cars" every time I inched forward. Gotta love a backseat driver.

I woke up at 2:00am this morning unable to go back to sleep because I was obsessing over the awful cat litter smell at my front door. A neighborhood cat has started using the mulch alongside my walkway as her own personal litter box and the smell is awful. Not sure why this was bothering me so much when my house is in shambles and smells like mildew.

And just to end on a positive note, when I was staying at Mark and Rosie's I went in to check on Ellie one night and could not find her anywhere. I opened the closet door and found her sound asleep with a pair of Tom's running socks and a stopwatch draped around her neck. I love how I always find Ellie sleeping in the most random positions.

Life goes on

I didn't really blog about the details of Hurricane Ike and even though it is so last week, I still want to document it. Tom and I were pretty excited about being given Friday off to prepare for the storm. We didn't go outside and party with everyone else on our block, but we did have our own little hurricane party. We set up a bed for Ellie in our room and casually awaited the storm. Around 1 am, it started getting pretty loud. The wind was howling and the rain was coming in torrents. We stayed up for awhile and then decided to try to get some sleep around 4:30 even though the storm was incredibly loud. At about 6, Tom woke me up and said he heard water dripping. We walked out into the living room/dining room area and noticed water pouring down from the vents and lights. Upon closer inspection, we realized that it was coming in the windows and seeping in through the ceiling at the seams. We quickly pulled out every pot, pan, towel, and tarp that we owned and tried to minimize the damage. It felt like we would get one leak under control only to find another one in another part of the house. At this point, the power came back on, but we had to turn off the breaker because water was coming in the outlets and lights.
Cell phones weren't working, but I was sending frantic text messages to my parents who had evacuated to San Antonio asking them when the freaking rain would stop. Then, we heard a loud crash and walked in the garage to discover this:
Our ceilings in the dining room and bathroom were also beginning to buckle so we decided to evacuate. I sent a text message to my brothers and parents saying: Sheetrock falling, Evacuating to Mark's. The storm had let up by this point, but it was still windy and rainy.
We made it safely to Mark's house. He didn't have power or water, but at least it was dry. Later that evening, the boys came back to put tarps on our roof. You can't really tell from this picture, but the tarps extend to the back as well. We had shingles littering our front and back lawn. I was so grateful they got the tarps on because we had another bad rainstorm that night.
The next day, I ventured back over to our house to try to dry the place out. We pulled out carpet and began cleaning up.
The rest of the week, I kept returning to the house to try to clean up and get rid of the horrible mildew smell. I mopped all the concrete with Clorox and water and moved all of our stuff to the few rooms that didn't get damaged.Like Ellie's room.
Last night, we decided to return home so we could have a sense of normalcy (well, as much normalcy as you can have surrounded by chaos and concrete). Hurricane Ike sucked, but it wasn't all bad. One, it gave me a sense of perspective. Yeah, my house was a disaster, but my family was all safe and sound. Also, it put a halt to my life. We didn't have to go to work for over a week and it was a time that we all just gathered together as a family. I enjoyed the break from the normal hustle and bustle of everyday life. I know I will be grateful for that break once construction starts on our house and we have to juggle that with working full time and taking care of the little monster.

Homeless

We are still at my brother's house and it looks like we will be here for quite some time. Our home is pretty much uninhabitable and we still don't have a time estimate of when the insurance adjuster will be able to come look at our house. I know I just need to be patient, but I hate being in limbo. We need to replace our entire roof, redo sheetrock in 75% of the house, and replace flooring in 50% of the house. I worry that it will be virtually impossible to find contractors or supplies since millions of people are in the same situation. Even though my brother's family is awesome, I hate being a burden on them. I really just want to get back to my old life as soon as possible and I have absolutely no idea when that will be.

On the bright side, school has been cancelled all this week so at least I don't have to work. I have enjoyed having this time with Ellie and Tom. Ellie loves staying with her cousins and so does our dog Kali. My brother has a huge backyard and a Great Dane for Kali (and Ellie) to play with. Also, for the first time in her life, Ellie has been sharing a bed with Tom and I so she is just in heaven. I, on the other hand, am exhausted! This family bed business is not for me.

Update

We had to evacuate because our roof came off. Well, not the whole roof, but the shingles. Water was pouring in and then sheet rock started falling so we made a hasty retreat. We went back today to rip out carpet and put to put tarps on the roof. The smell of mildew was disgusting. Looks like we will be homeless for a bit. Oh, and our fence blew down, but that's not really surprising. I guess the important thing is we are all safe and very lucky to have family willing to put us up!
Pictures to come soon.

GALVESTON SINKS; IKE 135 MILES AWAY

That is the headline on chron.com right now. I am glad Ellie was able to go to Galveston two weeks ago before it sunk!
It is getting dark and windy outside. I took Kali for one last walk and was able to admire the preparations of my neighbors. One guy down the street wrote "Ike, Tina isn't here!" on his boarded up window. I laughed. We haven't boarded up our windows, but we have been busy preparing on other ways. One good thing about Ike is that he prompted us to finally clean out our garage to make room for both cars. Well, maybe clean isn't the right word.

Hello, Ike!

Because Hurricane Ike is heading our way, school has been canceled for tomorrow. We are getting ready to hunker down for the storm (if it really does hit us this time...I am experiencing hurricane fatigue these days). I stopped by the school library to stock up on books to read for the long weekend. I think my little reindeer monkey can fend for herself.

Open House

Tonight was Open House for parents at my school. Last year I was so nervous about meeting the parents and telling them about my class. This year I was also really nervous, but mostly because Ellie was coming with me and I was leaving her in the library for Key Club to babysit. I have never left her for babysitting with anyone other than family and I was surprised how anxious I was about it! I hardly gave the parents a second thought.

Ellie did great, though. She was hesitant to let go of my leg at first, but as soon as I passed over the special treat of M&M's to one of the babysitters, she hardly gave me a second glance.

I am glad tonight is over with and I don't have to deal with parents again until Bring Your Parent to School Day. Yikes!

In trouble

I don't like to clean. No really, I hate it. Which is why I don't let Ellie play with glue, or paints, or markers...you get the idea. But I really needed to find something new and fun for her to do because she has started liking SpongeBob SquarePants and there is nothing educational about the Bob. So I busted out the washable markers this weekend. She did really well the first day, sticking solely to her paper. Yesterday? Not so much.She even managed to color her face and the bottoms of her feet. I guess sometimes paper just isn't enough.

Happy Birthday, Kolby

My uber-creative sister-in-law Sabrina threw a farm-themed birthday party for Kolby yesterday. The kids went from station to station participating in toddler-friendly activities. They milked a cardboard cow...
planted seeds...
collected eggs...
and played a farm-version of musical chairs (without the chairs).
The kids had a blast at all the stations, but nothing was quite as fun as the wheel barrow filled with ice that the juice boxes were stored in. The kids happily sucked on ice as they played in it.
I was also able to take my yearly picture of my brother and Tom holding Kolby and Ellie. I have basically snapped this same pose at every one of Kolby's party. It might be a little awkward when they are teens, but I plan on keeping the tradition going.

Do you like seafood?

See food.
I'm sorry. I just couldn't help myself.

Dog Park (but will work for toddlers)

Kali has been a little depressed since she lost her pal Hank so we decided to take her to her most favorite place in the whole wide world....the dog park. We have never taken Ellie with us to the dog park (or DP as we like to call it), but it is now her most favorite place as well. She loved chasing after Kali and she seemed to think the agility course was her own personal playground. She didn't even cry when random dogs would tackle her. Overall, the dog park was the perfect place to wear out both dog and toddler.

Galveston

Ellie went to the beach with her cousins on Saturday. Tom and I were a little nervous about letting her to to a place with water without us, but we knew she would be safe in Rosie's capable hands. (Why didn't we go? We had a very important A&M game to attend where we watched them get slaughtered by freaking Arkansas.) So anyway, Ellie LOVED the beach just as we knew she would. As soon as they got there, Ellie took off running straight for the water and nearly gave Mark a heart attack as he was busy carrying the cooler and trying to convince Kolby to keep walking. Ellie loved the waves, even when they slapped her in her face. Luckily, she also loved her life preserver. When she wasn't trying to drown herself, she would chase the pigeons up and down the beach, never giving up hope that she might actually catch one or that one would listen to her demands to let her hold him. Of course, I was not there, so I am telling all of this second hand, but I do have the pictures to prove it.