Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

Christmas came early at our house this year. It SNOWED on Wednesday night. What a sight to see. I have seen a lot of snow in my time but not during my time in Texas. It has now snowed twice since we've lived here...Christmas Eve 2004 and December 10, 2008. We have officially survived a hurricane and a blizzard in the span of three months! Okay, we did survive a hurricane. That much is true. Wednesday night's blizzard may have only consisted of enough snow to cover the ground but for southeast Texas, that counts as a blizzard. Work with me people. All of Pearland and the greater Houston area was outside enjoying the snow. I took a few pictures to document the special occasion.

It's starting to snow.

My car's first snow.

It's starting to look a lot like Christmas...

I just want to play tennis...

November 16th. It started out like any other Sunday...morning spent at church. Then Jeremy raced home to play two tennis matches to finish his season with flex tennis. The first opponent was a no-show. If only the second opponent would have been a no-show. Long story short, Jeremy went up for an overhead shot and when he landed he heard a loud snap. Not a good sign. His right ankle immediately became swollen. His opponent just so happened to be a physician and advised Jeremy to go to the emergency room since he thought Jeremy's ankle was broken. Jeremy went home instead. After some discussion....Jeremy went to the emergency room. They determined that he had two torn ligaments. No fracture. So Monday was spent visiting the orthopedic surgeon and getting fitted for an aircast.

You can't really drive with an aircast, so I became Jeremy's personal chauffeur for the week. He went back see Dr. Fukuda on the 24th for a check-up. Things weren't looking better, so off to radiology he went. Again, no fracture. Jeremy got downgraded to a hard ankle brace and off we went. About 20 minutes later, Dr. Fukuda called and said she looked at the xrays again and thought there was a fracture after all. So, a CT scan was scheduled for the next day. Luckily, the CT scan showed that there was not a fracture. Fracture? No fracture? Decide already. So, back to the ankle brace for three weeks and then hopefully rehab.

Tennis will just have to wait.

~T

Mistaken Identity

I received the following email today:

Hi Tracy Wood,

My name is Tracy Wood! No, this is not a joke or SPAM. As you can see, my email address is only one letter different from yours. I'm writing to tell you that I have TONS of emails sent to me that were meant for YOU!Since I have not checked this email account since literally 2006, I'm only just finding these "lost" emails today. Sooo, have you experienced anyone saying "I emailed that to you, did you get it?" Now you know why! Well, I'm very sorry for this inconvenience. If you'd like me to forward any messages to you, I'd be happy to. Incidentally, I'm just curious, whereabouts do you live? I'm just outside Washington, DC.
Best, Tracy

I wonder what emails are awaiting me and how she figured out they were meant for me. Our email address is off by one letter, my middle initial. I'm sure there are quite a few variations of my name used in said email address. Should be interesting to read the emails she forwards to me since some of them are from 2006. If you sent me an email and I didn't respond, now you know why! My email address is my first name, middle initial, last name (at) gmail (dot) com. The middle initial is very important, people. :-)

~T

Trip Down Memory Lane

We made a quick trip to Kansas for my Grandma's 80th birthday party. I uploaded pictures to Flickr. I'll provide a narrative later...but for now, check out the pictures here.

~T

Followers

Let us know if you follow our blog - over there on the right...Onetreefam Followers. It will be good incentive for me to update on a regular basis.

~T

Oh Baby!

Happy parents-to-be.

What a day! I think the baby shower was a success. We had a great team pulling everything together. I finished the party favors this morning...I was fairly pleased with the way they turned out even if everyone wasn't sure what to do with them. :)

I put a package of daisy seeds (Jennifer's favorite flower) and a package of sunflower seeds in an "envelope" made of cardstock. I crimped the ends of the envelope and then tied a ribbon around it. The baby shower had a garden theme...hence the flower seeds. Here's a picture of the final product.

For prizes, I bought some small garden tools and put them in a clay pot along with more flower seeds and fertilizer spikes. I put a cute ribbon around the clay pot and used spanish moss as filler for the pots. Here's a picture of the prizes.

The decorations and food were awesome. Everything looked really great and the weather was amazing (the baby shower was outside in our prayer garden at church). Emma's arrival is only a month away. I think her parents received a lot of great gifts today to help them prepare for her arrival. More than that...they received a lot of love and support from their family, church family, and friends. Here are a few more pictures of the baby shower. I'll get the rest uploaded to Flickr soon (hopefully tomorrow). Big round of thanks to Amber, Caroline, Carolyn, Jeanette, Tiffani, Beverly, and Caryn (in no particular order - well actually, in alphabetical order by last name) for everything they did. Today was truly a joint effort. We are blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful people.

Mmm...lollipop garden cake.

It's a butterfly!

It's Emma Ruth!

Butt paste!

Future Astros fan!

Happy Anniversary!

It's a couple of days late but...Happy Anniversary to us. Twelve years! This is the first year in a long time that we didn't take a trip for our anniversary. We didn't officially take a trip last year. But we did leave the house and stay at a swanky hotel (last year). This year, we stayed home. No trip. No swanky hotel. We're saving our money for the deductible(s). Two deductibles. Both are for our windstorm coverage. Homeowners insurance won't cover anything associated with hurricanes.

The insurance adjuster was out last week. He said it will take about three weeks to hear anything final. He did say we should replace the garage door now. It was bent during Hurricane Ike but still worked. Of all mornings, the garage door broke the morning the adjuster was here. He actually stayed to help me get my car out so I could go to work after he left. :) Overall, it went well. Most of the repairs will be in the garage (new garage door, replacing sheetrock, repainting, etc.) and repairing/replacing the fence. He wants us to repair most of the fence. I think it would be easier to replace it. We have to replace some shingles but it sounds like the ridge vents are in good shape. Our leaks in the house came from the ridge vents. Not sure about the office yet. We already fixed the trees. So now, it's time to start getting estimates. We have to get three estimates before getting anything fixed. If you know of any reputable roofers, fencers, garage door repairmen, or sheetrock repairmen in the Pearland area...let me know.

What did we get for our anniversary, you ask? We're buying a new garage door! I've always asked for power tools for Christmas. Why not a garage door for our anniversary. :) It's not exactly the traditional gift of silk, the modern gift of linen, or the alternate modern gift of pearls but hey it's our anniversary, our rules. I do like pearls, though (for future reference).

~T

Craftiness Abounds

Craftiness - the quality of being crafty

(not the quality of being disingenuous and lacking candor)

This is the invitation I made for Jennifer & Matt's baby shower. Click on the picture to get a better view. I got the idea from a gift bag we made at Jennifer's house. Carolyn came over, I told her my idea, and we got to work. We got everything done in a few hours over a weekend with the exception of the printing. There were some issues with the date/time that had to be worked out. Once that was settled, I printed the text on vellum, cut them down, punched the border, and attached them to the cardstock with ribbon. I think they turned out pretty good. I really like the stamp set. It might be my new favorite. The party favors were just delivered this week. I need to decide how I'm going to dress them up. I bought everything for the prizes and just need to put them together. I will post pictures of the party favors and prizes later. I can't tell you what they are just yet....don't want to spoil the fun.

~T

Broken Links

Apparently some of the links I set up weren't working. They should be fixed now. Click away.

Brandon Backe Arrested

My favorite Astros player was arrested! I'm sure it's all a misunderstanding. The baseball he autographed is displayed on my dresser. I hope it doesn't become a Brandon Backe autographed baseball, pre-conviction. The article says a FEMA coordinator was also arrested. This all took place on Galveston Island at the San Luis Resort. Tasers, pepper spray, oh my. What has Hurricane Ike created?

Update 10/7/08:

Here's the latest article on Brandon Backe's arrest. It sounds like the Galveston PD has some explaining to do...

Post Hurricane Ike

Things are pretty much back to normal for us post Hurricane Ike. We're both back to work...I missed two days of work post Ike, Jeremy missed two weeks! His school was without power until the 27th or 28th. My office, a whole five minutes from Jeremy's school, either never lost power or regained power by the 14th. Lucky me. :P We're finally able to purchase gas without waiting in line. We're even able to buy bread, milk, and eggs again. It's wonderful. The windstorm adjuster is scheduled to come look at the damages next week. I'll be glad to move forward and make final repairs, especially the fence. It has already fallen over once since Ike. Thankfully, we haven't had any rain since Ike so no more leaks. I just hope the rain holds off for another week or so. The trees are holding up fairly well. Not quite vertical but at least they are still alive. We may try to straighten them a little more but when we straightened them the first time, I got smacked in the mouth with one of the metal stakes. That left a nice cut on my lip. Not fun.

It's been a busy few weeks. I made programs for Jeremy's musical (Birds of Paradise), invitations for Jennifer & Matt's baby shower, and a couple of important birthday cards. Happy Birthday Dad! Happy Birthday Jean! Tonight, I made about 20 Christmas cards. My goal is to actually send out Christmas cards this year. Send me your address, I'll send you a card. :) At least leave a comment, so I know someone's still reading this blog. October resolution...blog more.

Hurricane Ike

http://www.flickr.com/photos/onetreefam/sets/72157607256873478/

We still have electricity - barely. It has been flickering off/on now for a while. I can't believe it has stayed on this long. The wind is really howling now. Not the most pleasant sound I have ever heard. I am not looking forward to listening to this all night. The eye is still two hours away. And then we get to do it all over again when the other side of the outer bands come through. Joy.

Max sustained winds are 110 mph, only 1 mph away from a Category 3 hurricane. Here, we are expected to experience North wind 55 to 75 mph, with gusts as high as 95 mph. I have opened the door and all I can say is the wind is strong! I think it's only about 40 mph now according to the news so I know we won't be opening the door for the 75 - 95 mph winds. We're losing electricity pretty often now...probably about 5 times while I've written these two paragraphs. I'm shutting down if I get to post this.

For now, we're experiencing a lot of wind and rain. The wind is angry. I've never heard anything like it. I really feel for everyone in Galveston and Surfside. They will not have much to go back to. I wish everyone in the mandatory evacuation areas would have listened and left before today. Before Ike even hit, there were ~65 rescues and at least 150 rescue calls. People all along the water thought they would just ride it out. Really?!? Time to pray for Galveston and all the areas along the ship channel.

I'll post more tomorrow. We are safe. Doing well. Hunkered down as they are saying. :P

Be sure to check our flickr page for pictures. I posted some before pictures of our house and will post some more tomorrow. We have a curfew for the unforeseable future - 6pm to 5am. No one is allowed to be out and about. Lots of time to blog.

Love to all.

~T

We're not in Kansas anymore....or maybe we are

Yesterday we had a tornado in Pearland, Texas! I didn't see it but a few of my friends did. As you can see, it wasn't very big and didn't pack too much punch. We did enjoy a lot of rain, wind, and a beautiful double rainbow after it was all over. We lost power a couple of times during the day/evening for extended periods which is notable since we NEVER lose power at our house. Even when the rest of Pearland is in the dark, we'll still have power. We are on a good grid. It just didn't stand up to the storm yesterday.

Bye Bye Birdie

Today is cleaning day. Inside and out. Jeremy was inside cleaning while I was outside cleaning. I mowed the yard but am leaving the weed eating to Jeremy. The weed eater is not my friend. I also pulled a few weeds and added a little mulch to the front bushes. The yard looks good. Our trees look really good even though we basically leave them to their own defenses. Our neighbors add all kinds of "tree food" to their trees and still can't get them to grow. I think sometimes you just need to let nature do it's own thing.

Speaking of nature...

I cleaned the front door and wanted Jeremy to see how good it looked. He came out and admired my work. (btw, I used this stuff called Awesome and let me tell you, it is Awesome...cleans anything. Thanks for the tip, Jean!) Okay, back to the nature part. Jeremy was either still admiring the newly clean front door or doing something else outside, when he beckoned me to come outside. We had a visitor. A bird was at our front door. In the corner of our entry way, facing the brick. Poor little thing looked disoriented and out of breath. I sat down on the door stoop and the bird came right up next to me practically climbing on my lap. Then birdie tried to get between me and the door. I got up and birdie flew (barely) away, just past the sidewalk, and started flopping from side to side. It was very upsetting. I stood there and watched this poor little bird take it's last breath. Ewwww. I didn't see any injuries so I'm not sure why it died. Luckily, Jeremy did the dirty deed and took the birdie away.

Bye bye birdie.

Update Coming Soon!

I've been a bad blogger! It's nice to know that someone (even two people) rely on this blog for updates. So, as requested, I will update. Soon. Tonight even. Now, I just need to leave the office and head for home.

Here's a fun picture to keep you entertained in the interim...

Thanks for checking in. Stay tuned!

~T