A Wild Ride, but it could have been wilder! (so long Ike!)

After a night of listening in the dark to the winds howling, trees snapping, the upstairs shaking (during the worst of it), this is what we woke up to (not too bad, lost none of my trees, only branches, no damage to roof or house)-- With the power out (for 9 days, and some people in our city went even longer without), Lauren and Dan and girls moved in with us, since we had a generator. We were blessed with a cool front for most of the first week. It was so nice to have a generator to power our frige, freezer, a few lamps, box fans and T.V. (non-stop coverage on the hurricane recovery).

The hurricane was such an adventure and fun for the kids. Uncle TaTa introduced the girls to boxing. Jessica did neat crafts with them. Kyla says, "Next time we have a hurricane, Grammy, and we run out of food, we'll come over to your house and help you make lunch." (They were so grateful to have cold milk at our house, and normal meals.)
Thanks to our generator, we were also able to do some laundry. Dan enjoyed folding clothes.

It was a minor inconvenience being without electricity, compared to what folks went through who lived closer to the gulf. We feel so fortunate. This is a photo Philip took when he was with a Mormon "Helping Hands" crew in Galveston. When he knocked down a wall, and a hive of killer bees was exposed, he set a new personal best time in the mile, escaping with only one bee sting to his lip. The water line in the home, came up to his chest. Inches of water still stood in the home a week after the storm. The smell was so bad, it almost made him sick. The family had just bought new furniture a few weeks before the storm. All was ruined. It'll be a long time before the Galveston we knew gets back to "normal".

Yikes! It's Ike

We spent today boarding up windows, clearing the yard of any loose items. It's scary to have such a huge hurricane bearing down on us. Many of our neighbors are staying, including us. When I visited the police station today, they said we should be O.K. if our street has never flooded before. We've been here through some pretty bad tropical storm flooding situations, and have been high and dry. We're still feeing anxious. I'll let you know after the storm passes, and when the electricity gets back on, how we fared.

The stork is our new family pet!

These three gals, my daughters and daughter-in-law, are all expecting at the same time! Courtney is expecting her first, a boy, at the end of November. Lauren is expecting her first boy, after 3 girls, at the end of February. Emily is expecting her fourth, a girl, in the beginning of November. When these three are born, our grandkids will outnumber our kids. This Grammy is very excited to meet the new little ones. I love their mamas (and daddies) very much!

Elayna turns 8!

On Aug. 23rd, her birthday, our sweet Elayna (our oldest grandchild) was baptized. All her little Texas cousins and most of her Texas uncles and aunties were there, and even an uncle and auntie from Utah. She sets such a good example as the oldest of many cousins on both her mommy and her daddy's side. Love you Elayna!

Olympic fatigue

Grammy and Grandpa are feeling major exhaustion heading into the final stretch of the 2008 Olympics. But we are so addicted to the Olympics and have enjoyed every minute. It's been fun watching 3 of the athletes whom we've seen complete in person. We saw BYU grad Josh McAdams (steeplechase) running in a meet at BYU (Jeremy got to run with him his freshman year.) We saw Leonel Monzono (sp?)(men's 1500--he didn't make it into the finals, which are on tonight) run at almost all of Jeremy's state meets. Jeremy competed against him at state in the mile and beat him in the mile (but Monzono was having a bad race, having just come off the 800, which he won). Monzono, who was a year ahead of Jeremy in school, was terrific in high school, winning every state cross country meet. Another athlete, who ran for LaPorte's high school and was in our district was Kerron Clement, who medaled in last night's 400M hurdles. I remember how amazed I was at the effortless grace and speed with which this high school athlete cleared the hurdles, and knew he'd go far.
This is our official Olympic souvenir all the way from China! A delegation of chemists from China visited the lab at the refinery (Exxon Mobil wouldn't let them visit!) and Grandpa showed them around. They told him how China is about to build a huge refinery, bigger than any of ours. They were amazed at all the fancy equipment the lab has. In China, where there is such a big labor pool, they use people to do a lot of testing that is done by high tech equipment here. One of them gave Grandpa this "Beijing Official Licensed Product", complete with the added security feature of an "anti-counterfeiting label". (Who knows what other features it has, like an embedded spying micro-chip.)

Hi Ho Silver, Away!

Those were the days! Growing up in the 50's was fun. Kids were free to be kids. We were outside from dawn to dusk --spring, summer, autumn, winter. Only hurricanes, blizzards, or a bad case of poison ivy could keep us indoors. We were all over the place, riding bikes, roller skating, running around. You drive through any neighborhood now, and ask yourself, "Where are all the kids?"
We had our heroes, the main ones being our fathers, who had come home triumphant and proud from World War II. Some of our other heroes, were the Lone Ranger, Sky King, Davy Crockett, and Robin Hood. This picture of me and my side-kick, the Lone Ranger, is especially for my niece, Sylvia. Thought you'd enjoy seeing your dad, the "distinguished" Dr. Charlie N., as a little boy.

"Date" with Grandaughter

The first thing we did was to see the very entertaining children's theatre production of "The Pied Piper" at Alvin Community College. After that, Elayna got to choose where to go for lunch -- MacDonald's, of course.

Elayna got to spend the night, and the next day, she tried out her culinary skills making mini pizzas for lunch. She made buttermilk biscuits from scratch to use for the dough

Elayna's awesome pizza won her title of "Junior Food Network Cooking Star", and she's on the cover of this month's "bon appetit" magazine! (They really need to fire their lousy photographer.)

We even got to "visit teach" Jolene. Elayna knows why this picture is a puzzle. We strained our brains (more so for me, than Elayna) trying to put together a 1,000 piece puzzle. Whatever was I thinking when I bought it -- next time it'll be 500 pieces. It's so much fun being a grammy and spending time with a precious grandchild!