THE FENCE RE-BUILDERS

I had originally called today's blog "the fence builders" but then realized they didn't actually build the fence, just repaired it. I wish I had taken pics of the holes D & Jordan had to dig to get the old fence posts out. They were about two feet deep and two feet across. I will never complain about the gym membership I pay for Jordan. He is one strong kid!! They worked on it most of Saturday. Clint was here Sunday afternoon to help. Here's pics of them working

Here's pics of them balancing pickets on their fingertips. Clint could balance two but I was moving out of the way and missed the pic.
(not sure about the goofing face)
Jordan decided this picket looked like a can opener

You can tell it doesn't take much to amuse us here.

Here they are pretending to be on Home Improvement with "Tim" talking to the neighbor. Let's see who can be the first to remember the neighbor's name 'cause I can't think of it now.


I'm amazed at how well my sons get along now that they don't live in the same house. My precious mother-in-law told me that would happen.

Happy Monday everyone.

THE ROOF, THE SQUIRREL, THE LIZARD....

Excuse me while I finish my hysterical laugh at Linda's eyebrow blog.

Okay, the insurance guy came yesterday. He told us he'd been working in Louisiana where they talk funny. Trying to break the ice, I said "we're from Oklahoma, we talk funny too". He said "I'm an Okie too!!" Yippee, we're off to a good start! He looked at our pictures of the wet room then went up and started measuring and taking pictures of his own. Told us we'd done an excellent job of drying the room and he didn't smell any mold. He went outside and put his ladder against the house and climbed right up and started walking around. I thought D. was gonna puke! He called late and said $22,000 should cover half of the roof (they only pay to fix the side the damage is on), the walls, ceiling, electrical, floor etc. Then minus the $2800 deductible and $3400 "recoverable depreciation" leaves us with about $15K.

Remember when I said a contractor was going to come yesterday? Well, he didn't come so now we're looking for another one. D. sent an email yesterday to a guy in our church and we're waiting to hear back from him. Kinda makes me want to learn how to multi-task.

I've been watching the squirrel this morning. Bailey is going crazy. I put her outside in the back and told her to go find the backyard squirrel. Between her running back and forth inside the house between the two front windows and the squirrel going back and forth between the two trees, I'm getting dizzy. I took a picture just because I didn't have any other pictures to post. Then I saw a lizard on the tree and took it's picture too. It's a slow news day. WE have these lizards all over the place down here. One day D. was sitting in the living room and one was on the arm of the chair!! That was the end of THAT lizard! They say they're good for the flower beds.






Haven't mentioned Clint lately. He's doing well at college. He's keeping busy working and had his first round of tests last week. Did great on a couple and not so great on a couple. Guess that evens everything out. He hasn't been home yet to see all the damage around here. How come he gets to miss out on the fun? There could be a new gal lurking around (did I say lurking? didn't really mean it that way). He's not talking much about her though.

Here's a pic of Bailey. I just thought it was cute.


I had just finished vacuuming the stairs. She's scared of the vacuum but not of the lawn mower. I don't get it.

I think I'll go look at paint colors now. Looks like I'll be handling that chore for sure.

PRAY FOR THURSDAY!

Girlfriends (don't think any guys read) the insurance adjuster will be here Thursday to give us a quote about our damages. We were able to find a contractor who reluctantly agreed to look at our house. He's a friend of a friend and told D. he has more than enough work for months to come. D. told him we weren't in a hurry and the house is livable. We just wanted assurance that someone would agree to do it for us. We're thankful for that. Please pray the adjuster will give us a generous offer and there won't be any problems as we begin the repairing process.


Please continue to pray for the folks in our area. Many, many people STILL don't have electricity! The Galveston area doesn't have power, water, or sewer. They are letting people back on the island today. Parts of our subdivision don't have power and we feel very blessed to live on the "right" street.

It hasn't rained since the storm. That's been a huge blessing too. Can you imagine how much more of a mess that would add to the debris STILL NOT picked up?

I'll let ya know about the adjuster...probably Friday.

Love you guys!!!

Generator etiquette: They are very noisy. With the windows open, the considerate time to turn them off is 10-10:30 pm.

THINGS I AM THANKFUL FOR WHEN THERE IS NO POWER

1. My Bible
2. The brand spankin new generator and full gas cans
3. A refrigerator plugged into the generator
4. Non-electric can opener
5. Gas cook top
6. COFFEE MAKER
7. Flashlights (but I'm going to buy an oil lantern)
8. Cell phone (even though the coverage was spotty)
9. New walking shoes
10. Highs in the mid-80s and no humidity. It was cool at night!

Even though we had a generator, it didn't power the whole house and we turned it off at 10:30 (generator ettiquette).

AND THEN THE FIRE TRUCK CAME

Our power was restored while we were out to dinner with friends Wed. night. It was so exciting to drive past the Old Navy by our house and realize the lights were on. That was a good sign. As we drove into the neighborhood, we began to see street lights and lights inside homes. Real lights, not flashlights, candles or generator lights. One whole section was still in the dark so we weren't holding our breath. We got closer to our street and started seeing the lights again. Finally, our street and the lights are on! Praise God!!

We came in and began plugging in the lamps and started looking at the house like we hadn't seen it for days even though we had been home since Sunday. We got things somewhat organized and I came over here to the computer to check messages and my very important blog. I think I was in the middle of reading O Fam and the smoke alarms start going off. After a minute or two, they're still on. We had heard of people having fires in their homes after the current comes back so the thought DID cross our minds that there could indeed be a fire. We went into Jordan's room where all the damage was, but nothing was turned on there. Opened the attic door and didn't see any fire up there. By now, the sound of the alarm is really getting annoying. Minutes pass and it's pretty apparent the alarms are not going to stop so D. calls the fire dept. He assured them there isn't a fire, but we don't know how to get the alarms to stop. We've been homeowners most of our adult lives and have never dealt with this before. The fire dept. says we need to get out of the house, just in case. So I grab my shoes, my purse, my envelope of very important papers (I learned about that after the tornado when people didn't have SS cards, birth certificates, passports, etc.). We put Bailey on her leash and realize we have no idea where Minnie is. Hopefully, she's hiding under a bed more annoyed than we are about the noise.

The fire truck finally shows up. It's now about 11:00 pm. Strangely enough, we don't see any of our neighbors. I guess people turned on the a/c and closed the windows and are oblivious to the loud alarm and equally loud fire truck. They didn't turn on the siren, but still the truck was really noisy. They slowly approach the house with their smoke detecting box. Too bad none of my fireman friends in OKC read this blog....they could help explain it better. It took them FOREVER to go thru the house trying to find the source of the offending odor. Offending to the smoke alarms anyway. Did I mention they still haven't turned off the alarms yet???? 15, 20 minutes pass. Jordan, Bailey and I are still sitting on the curb wondering what the deal is. They all finally come out and go to the breaker box and turn off power to the house. All of a sudden, everything is dark again. What a disappointment! But at least it's a quiet dark. They reset the breaker and leave without much of an explanation about why it all happen. We go back inside. It's now midnight.

Last night, D. and I were back up in Jordan's room and he removes the smoke alarm. Water pours from it! That's probably the problem. All the alarms are wired together and when one is goofed up, they go off. Why didn't the firemen think of that? Anyway, our alarms are still turned of at the breaker so our prayer is now that there will be no fire at our house until we get that taken care of.

D. spoke to a roofing company yesterday. They can give us an estimate next week. This week they are only out making temporary repairs. I guess most folks don't have an awesome handy-man teenager to fix their roofs. He also did an excellent job fixing the fence. He and I worked on the pool all day yesterday and it's looking much better....not such a mean green anymore. Here's a pic of the neighbors cheering on the tree cutters

And finally, how would you like to be this guy?

Next post, things I'm thankful for when the electricity is out.

I REALLY, REALLY DON'T LIKE IKE NOW

FINALLY, it's Thursday morning and I can sit down at the computer. Our power came on last night and as I was reading blogs and emails, the smoke alarms went off. It really interrupted my reading and I'll post about it tomorrow....the firetruck came and that's all I'm saying now.

As I posted Friday, we fled Houston and hung out with our friends in Dallas. These are the same friends I mentioned when posting about Melody. They have three daughters, two are away at college. Thank goodness for that or we would've been sleeping on the floor. We had fun despite knowing a city we've fallen in love with, Galveston, was being destroyed. It's only a little over an hour away and we go there quite a bit to eat, shop and enjoy the sounds of the ocean. It's not a pretty beach, but it's a beach and we usually take visiting friends there too. I don't know when they'll have it put back together. Many of the landmarks are gone (note to Allison, the ice cream shop is under water). Our friend's brother and family were there too. I graduated from high school with him so we had fun catching up. Their dad was there for a visit. I've known him forever too. We played wii (I beat D. at bowling), cooked out, went shopping and watched the Sooners win. Jordan had one of his friends go past our house after the storm and he told us everything looked fine....just a couple of shingles missing. OH MY GOSH, if only he could've gone into Jordan's room he would've seen what those couple of missing shingles actually created:





The ceiling fan is the only thing holding the rest of the ceiling up. We ripped up the carpet





And vacuumed up the water with the shop vac. It was buried in the garage behind all the furniture we'd just put in there (poor planning on our part) from the room.


We also ripped up about half of the carpet in Clint's room. As bad as this is, it could've been so much worse! This is in the cul-de-sac three houses down from us.



This is very typical of what our neighborhood looks like now. This is our neighbor's house behind us. Their tree got their house and the limbs punched holes in their neighbor's house.



Here's the mess on the front lawn now. I don't know when it will be picked up. Again, this is what many of the lawns look like so you can imagine the smell and the mess.





We also lost part of our fence. Jordan is supposed to go out and try to fix it today. Bailey loved running into the neighbor's yard to check it out. And the pool? Well, it's a lovely shade of green today and you can't even see the bottom.









Here's a pic of the "few shingles" missing and Jordan repairing it for us. Hubby is afraid of heights and stood at the top of ladder supervising Jordan fixing it for us.

Jordan will get a new bedroom out of the deal and lots of new clothes. I had just finished laundry Thursday morning before we "fled" and instead of putting his clothes away, I put them on his bed for him to pack from. Needless to say, most of those clothes are ruined from the insulation. The clothes in the bottom three drawers of his chest were dry, but the top drawer was wet. I'm washing them today to see if they are going to be okay.

We have much to be thankful for. Our neighbors told us that being home during the hurricane in the middle of the night was terrifying. They could hear trees falling and debris hitting their house. We were in the cellar during the May 3rd tornado and that only lasted a short time. I can't imagine what listening to it for hours would've been like. We were able to buy a generator before we left Dallas, so we had limited power. God blessed us with mild temperatures and I even got chilly sleeping in the chair by the window the first night home. It hasn't rained anymore so that too is a blessing. So many people lost their homes and we're looking at just one bedroom being damaged. Please pray we'll be able to find a reputable roofer soon. The insurance adjuster won't be here until next Thursday. Pray he'll bless us with his estimate to repair the roof. We're thinking of doing the walls ourselves (plenty of blogging material there).

Remember Jordan's laundry? Well, it ain't getting done with me typing so I'd better get busy. Pool chores await us too.

Thank you for praying for us during the whole ordeal.

I'll post about the firetruck tomorrow.

WE'RE OFFICIALLY IKE REFUGEES

Just a quick update to let my blogger friends we left town Thursday afternoon before the traffic got bad. We are safe and sound with friends in Maypearl, Texas. Hopefully, Hurricane Ike will blow himself away and not be as severe as they say. We live in far northwest Houston and are far away from the water. We're praying the wind won't be bad and when we get home, all will be okay.

Ta-ta til next week.

~~Laura

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY HUBBY!!

Hubby celebrated birthday number 47 yesterday (he's much, much older than me). Remember when I said we visited the Harley store last weekend? He picked out his gift there and told me not to buy him anything. It was some gadget for his bike. Jordan and I went back there yesterday so he could buy him something. I saw this lovely Skull clock and decided he needed it for the garage! Yep, I picked it out all by myself. D. didn't know quite what to say when he opened it.

I like to keep him guessing!

JUST CALL ME BIKER MAMA

My hubby bought a motorcycle in April. Not just any motorcycle, a Harley! Yep, mild manner D. joined the ranks of Hog owners. This isn't his first bike. He had one when he was a teenager.

Tee hee, he doesn't know I'm posting that. He used to ride this bike to my house back in 1980.

I've only been on one ride on the new bike. He got it right after I had knee surgery and he didn't want to take a chance of crashing us and hurting my knee again. Never mind that I've been finished with physical therapy since May. My knee is as good as new and I'm a little more worried about road rash than a knee injury. Anyway, we went to the Harley store Saturday and bought me a helment of my very own. He was still a little nervous about taking me out but I wore him down (I whined) and we went for a ride. It was so much fun!!

I felt like a dog hanging it's head out the car window going for a ride. I didn't bark at anyone though (cats don't bark).

There are a lot of guys at our church that ride. And some gals too. Our pastor's wife has a reputation of driving faster than any of the men. D's made some new friends and has gone on rides with guys from our Bible Study class. I go out to lunch, he goes on bike rides. The guys don't visit, they just ride.

I guess it's the same concept of socializing, only there's no talking.

Just riding.

THIS BLOGGER'S BLOCKED

Oh the pressure to post a creative blog. I've started a new one a couple of times this week, but just can't get into the groove. When I first began posting, I wrote "My kids are almost grown, I don't work outside the house anymore, I have no life". In other words, I don't have much material to draw from.



I thought about posting pics of Bailey doing something funny, but she's even been boring lately. Minnie, the cat...well she just sleeps all day.



I could post about the Houston Astros. I LOVE BASEBALL. Always have. I played softball growing up, played in ladies' church leagues and even played co-ed with D. a little bit (those men sure take it seriously). "We" coached both boys little league teams and we still go to high school games here. This is a very serious baseball town with many, many kids getting college scholarships and even a couple going straight to the big league. Last year our town was going crazy when a recent THS graduate pitched for the Astros a couple of games. Talk about M-A-D when the Astros traded him in the off season! I'm still fuming about that. In 2005, the Astros made it to the world series! We are very fortunate to get free, great tickets from D's work. We were at the game when they clenched the wild card series from Atlanta after 18 innings! I didn't think that game would ever end. Here's what it looked like when we finally won


That's about a zillion pounds of confetti. Glad I didn't have to clean up that mess.


Since that world series season (which we lost), they haven't done so well. This year started off bad, got better, got worse and is now looking up again. We've won 8 games in a row and I'm wondering if they've found their groove again. There are only 17 regular season games left and to make the playoffs, we have to win most of them and the other two teams ahead of us in the division need to lose.

Well, there ya go. A post about baseball from a mom who finds herself watching the games on TV every night, usually alone, yelling when they do good and rolling my eyes when they do bad, as if that can help them.

Next post....watching paint dry