Power, sweet power!!!

YEAH!!!!! I am excited to report that I'm writing this update from the comfort of our air conditioned, lighted, and Internet-connected home. Whoopee!! We returned from Austin this afternoon to find the CenterPoint energy crews working on our power lines. Within an hour, the juice was flowing again. Hallelujah! Good thing there were no generators to be had in Austin (they were all sent to Houston), so we didn't end up buying one after all.

So, life is starting to return to normal, but with a very clean fridge.

Matty was a trooper during our adventure, AND he hit two big developmental milestones along the way - WALKING (videos coming soon) and no more bottle. Our little guy is growing up. He still primarily crawls to get around, but he can stand himself up without help from furniture or us, and string together 5+ steps at a time. Now we need to get ready for Hurricane Matty.

7 days and counting...still no power

Apparently, getting the power restored for 2.26 million households takes awhile. We are part of the unlucky 1.21 million who are still waiting. The really crummy part is that virtually ALL of our neighborhood has power except a stretch of ten homes where ours is. No fair! The latest is that it may be THURSDAY before our power is restored. THURSDAY!!! Ugh.

So, our stint as nomads continues...after one night with Jen and John (thank you!), 3 nights with Jamie and Andy (thank you thank you thank you!) and 1 night at home, we packed up and headed for Austin yesterday. Juan had to be here for some meetings today anyway, so we made a family trip of it. We are now comfortably situated at the Hilton Garden Inn until Sunday. After that, our plan is to buy a generator and make do at home. The latest power updates make it look like both of our company offices and Matty's daycare should have power by early in the week, so as long as we have AC during the day, we can make it work with a small generator at night.

We are trying to remind ourselves how lucky we are - the poor people in Galveston have it MUCH MUCH worse. But boy do we miss being in our own home with good stuff like lights. We're crossing our fingers and toes that it really will be Thursday (or sooner...).

To quote the back window of a car we saw...I DON'T LIKE IKE!

We're okay!

Well, it has been an interesting few days to say the least. We survived Ike with minimal damage to the house (just a few window screens blown off and lots of debris to clean up). We are all doing fine, just without power.

We are VERY thankful to our friends Jen and John and Jamie and Andy for taking us in during the storm aftermath. Jen and John took us in on Saturday night. It felt soooo good to get some AC again. Unfortunately, the transformer in their neighborhood blew out the next morning. So, after a stop at home to clean out the fridge, we moved our power-mooching down to Pearland to stay with our friends Jamie and Andy, which is where we are today. It's ironic - Pearland was close to one of the mandatory evacuation zones, so before the storm, we were urging Jamie and Andy to come up and stay with us.

We are calling our house frequently in the hopes that the answering machine will pick up...so far, no luck.

Thanks to all who have called and e-mailed to check in on us!

1st Birthday!

I can't believe it, but Matty turned 1 year old this past Sunday. We had a BBQ at our house and were so happy to have many friends join us. Matty had a great time crawling around after the other kids. He wasn't quite sure what to do with cake. The icing was defnitely too sweet for his taste buds, so he enjoyed playing with it more than eating it. And, when the door closed after our last guests left, Matty broke out in tears. Stuck with boring old mom and dad again.

Check out the birthday party album below...

Trip to Montana and Yellowstone

We returned last week from a vacation in Montana and visits to Yellowstone National Park with my family. It was so nice to spend time with my family and to see Matty playing with his big cousins, Sam and Jack. He found them very entertaining. Click on the picture below to see our album from the trip. We highly recommend a trip to Yellowstone for anyone who hasn't been there yet! We were only able to scratch the surface, we would love to go back again.

Yellowstone

In other news, Matty is amazing us with how much he learns and changes every day. He is now an accomplished peek-a-boo player and knows how to wave bye-bye. Both skills came in very handy on the plane rides to and from Montana as he entertained the people behind us. Hs is also getting pretty comfortable on his feet. he can scoot his way around the couch in record time. He has taken a few steps between pieces of furniture, but is still crawling as his primary method of getting around. He also likes talking on the "phone" using the remote control. See below for a video of this, plus some other pictures from around the house.

Matty is on the move

I am sorry it's been so long since I've posted any new pictures, things have been busy! Since our last post, Matty has learned many new things:

• How to feed himself
• How to crawl with his belly OFF the ground (and fast!!!)
• How to clap his hands
• How to find, within seconds, any uncovered outlet in any room
• How to high five (sort of...sometimes he just grabs my hand)
• How to climb stairs (with CLOSE parental supervision of course)
• How to inflict great injury by kicking his legs when we take him away from something he shouldn't be playing with

In addition to all of that, we also took a nice trip to Minnesota recently. Our friends Sean and Meghan decided to host a Rice reunion at their home in Minneapolis, so in addition to catching up with many of our good friends from Rice, we also got to spend a couple days with my parents, and meet up with some of my cousins. Sadly, our camera ran out of batteries on day 1 and we were too lazy to go buy more, so we have very few pictures from the trip. But, here are some from around the house...

Grandma and Grandpa with Matty



Not only can I feed myself, but I can style my own hair! Oatmeal is a great hair gel.


Kissy face


The blinds provide hours of fun




Who needs toys when you have a cardboard box?


And, a video of him grooving to some music...but someone needs to tell the camera woman not to dance along with him.

Puppies!!!

Our friend Steve's labrador retriever just had 8 puppies, so we took Matty over to check them out. What could be cuter than a little boy and some puppies? Not much! See below for the pictures...

In other news, he is now pulling himself up on the furniture and in his crib. Bedtime is a bit more challenging now since he stands himself up as soon as we put him in the crib. I keep trying to tell him that its hard to fall asleep when you are standing, but he doesn't seem to listen. He's just so excited that he can stand up. And, he's starting to eat table food. I think about 90% of the food ends up in his lap, but he's learning!

Standing up!