grandchild # 7

I was out running when Brian called saying Emily had the baby -- 2 weeks early. Philip took the message and mistakenly told me she weighed 6 lb. 8 oz. (I was worried about our little "preemie"). We headed out to Beaumont that day (after watching Carl run in the district cross country meet) to greet our healthy, 8 lb. 9 oz. new granddaughter, Laila Isabella. What a joy to hold her in my arms! She was so alert, looking all around, and making good eye contact. Emily looked great and didn't seem tired, just happy and relieved. I'm heading out on Monday to help Emily for a week, and enjoy those precious grandkids.

Here are the kids meeting baby sister for the first time. Dario takes his role of big brother very seriously and loves holding Laila. Aiden is very excited, while sweet Ava isn't too sure of what's going on. (Stay tuned for more photos in a week, and check out Emily's blog -- she's already made an entry her first day home from the hospital!)

Saturdays

Our Saturdays go like this -- Around 5:00 A.M. I wake up to fix a pancake breakfast for Carl, as he gets ready to board the bus at 6:00 A.M. for a cross country meet. Then Grandpa Carl and I hop in the car and drive out to the meet. We've been doing this for about 12 years, starting with Andy, then Jeremy and Philip . We've rarely missed a meet all these years (the exception being a few Saturday morning general conferences). We've been there for most of our young coach's career.


A sprint to the finish (Clear Creek meet)

Carl, a junior in high school, is happy to be running on the varsity team. He's been one of the top four runners of his team.

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.)