8 Years!

8 years of marriage

7 cars (all used)

6 computers

5 years in college (while married)

4 apartments

3 bar exams (Texas, Illinois, Florida)

2 hurricanes

1 everlasting love

Love you babe! Here's to another 8 great years.

On a lighter note...

My baby turned 1! I have always heard people talk about how quickly their kids grow up, but I guess it never really registered with me until now. Jason's family came to Houston for the occasion. I invited a few kids from the neighborhood and ward to a little party and I bought a ball pit and we blew bubbles and had a jar full of puffs that the grownups had to guess the number of. And of course I made Kate her own cake that she could dig into. She was pretty dainty with it at first but really dug into it after awhile. Her are some things about Kate at one year old:

She loves to read books. She also loves to pull all her books off the bookself and hand them to me to read. I read about a page before she pulls another one off to hand to me.

She loves the water. Sometimes if I get really desperate for something to do with her I put her in the tub even if she has already had a bath.

She isn't walking yet but she can stand by herself for several seconds.

She loves to try and get to the dog's water bowl to splash around in it before I figure out what she is doing.

She is a picky eater but she usually likes toast with cheese and peas.

She loves animals. We are pretty sure her first word will be "George" (that's our dog, not the President).

Love you Kate! Happy first birthday!

I hate Ike!

It's been awhile since I posted, thanks to a little hurricane named Ike. I was so unprepared for the wrath of Ike. I think Jason and I have become jaded towards hurricane warnings after hurricane Rita turned out to be not a big deal (for us anyway). So even when it started looking like Ike was headed our way, we still weren't very concerned. I filled up the car with gas and bought some water and canned food. Then all we could do was wait and see what happened. The worst of the storm hit our area around 2am Saturday morning. Sometime around then we lost power and since I couldn't hear Kate on the baby monitor, I moved to a couch outside her room. To be honest, I also felt safer there since I sleep on the side of the bed close to the windows! Jason got up to see what time it was, and we were both glad to see it was around 6am, because we thought the worst had passed and we had avoided any damage. I fell back asleep for a few minutes and was woken up by a huge BANG! I had heard other bangs from tree limbs falling so I wasn't too worried, but when Jason came running into Kate's room, I knew something bad had happened. Sure enough, I went in the bedroom to see a hole in the ceiling and rain pouring in the room. We got buckets to catch the water and moved some stuff out of the room. After that we just kept emptying the buckets. I think we were both in shock and didn't really know what to do. We happened to look out the front window to see someone in the ward driving around to make sure everyone was okay. We ran out and told them what happened. They got a hold of some other ward members and tracked down some chainsaws and tarps. The bishop (!) sawed through the tree and managed to get it off the roof and covered up the hole with a tarp. Other people in the ward helped us get everything out of the room and closet and take out the now ruined carpet. It was an awful day, but it was pretty neat to see so many people rally around us and help us out so much. The insurance adjuster came Saturday and said we would get a check in about 2 weeks. Let's hear it for home owners insurance! Until then, I am getting bids from contractors to do repairs. I have no idea how long it will take to repair or how much it will cost, but I guess once this is all over, I will be schooled in building houses, right? We didn't have power for almost a full week, but it wasn't as hard to deal with that as I would have thought. We have a gas water heater and stove, so we could take hot showers and heat up soup and stuff. Also, the weather really cooled down and the humidity was low so we slept with the windows open and it was quite pleasant. I didn't miss TV as much as I would have thought, but I tell you what, I couldn't stop smiling after the power came back on!

Male mentality

I had to share this with everyone. I opened the fridge the other day to find this. I asked Jason why he had put a fork in the fridge and he said it was because he was using it to eat his potato salad and wanted to save some for later and thought he could just use the same fork. I told him that was not normal and he said "What, am I so fancy I have to use a clean fork every time I eat something?". After he realized how that sounded we laughed pretty hard.

Utah!

Man I have been a blacker (blogging/slacker-I just made that up. Boy am I tired). I was in Utah almost a month ago and am just now writing about it. Anyway, the flight there was...let's just say I have blocked it from my memory. Now you really want to know what happened, don't you? Here goes. My friend dropped me off at the airport and she has a baby so I didn't want her to have to park and walk me to the ticket counter so I just had her drop me outside. I figured I would get a cart or something for my luggage and I didn't want to bring the car seat or stroller because I thought it would be a hassle. But I had no idea the carts cost $3.00! That seemed scandalous at the time and I decided I could make it the few feet that I had to go to get to the counter. So here I am with Kate on one hip and trying to roll two suitcases with one hand. It doesn't work that way. But how many people watched me struggling and were thinking to themselves "That poor lady, someone should help her?". No one did! Oh well. I somehow got to the ticket counter and got through security. I went to the gate to find out the plane had been delayed due to rain. So we sat and waited, We didn't have to wait too long and the seat next to me was empty so I thought my luck was changing. But Kate was so hard! She is at the age when they don't want to sit still and she was constantly up or down or throwing things or grabbing the hair of the woman in front of me. One minute I was ready to break down in tears and the next minute I felt okay. I wasn't on a direct flight; I had a stop over in Denver and by some miracle got to Denver. But because of the plane delay in Houston, I missed my connecting flight! I went to the customer service desk and the line was so long. Kate hadn't had a nap and all I had packed for her was grapes and crackers. Luckily I was able to get on a flight to SLC only about an hour and a half later than my original plan. I had just taken Kate to change her diaper and saw that she had had diarrhea and it had leaked out onto my white shirt. By that point I didn't even care anymore. She slept on the short flight to Utah so that flight wasn't bad. But poor Kate! The next day her diaper was full of undigested grapes!
Anyway, the awful flight was worth it to get to see my family, especially my brother Paul who has been in Afghanistan and I haven't seen since Thanksgiving. I also got to see some of my awesome high school buddies and meet their adorable kids. My sister Alicia and my dad and I took Kate to the zoo. I figured she was probably too young to really enjoy it, but she did seem to have fun. My sisters and I also took her to the fountains at Gateway one day but she did NOT enjoy that! It was a great trip and so refreshing to be out of the humidity for awhile. And don't worry, the plane ride home was not nearly as traumatic as the ride there!