Y-IKE-S!!!

yes, i know i'm a dork. (read the title). well we're in san antonio, we came in thursday night once we found out school was cancelled for friday. we have, of course, been glued to the news here.
most of our family/friends in houston aren't getting any cell phone service so it's been hard getting updates. the power is out everywhere there and we're hearing it may not be back on for a week or more. we finally got in touch with brian's dad a few minutes ago... he went over to our house this morning to check things out. he said sections of our backyard fence was down and several sections of our roof shingles came off. hopefully water isn't leaking into our house. thankfully no windows are broken and none of our trees came down, that was what i was most worried about.
we are so sad for our city going through such a devastating time.
we might try to go back home tomorrow, but if the power isn't going to be back on for a few more days, we may wait it out here. i'll update more later. take care, all my fellow houstonians!

busy week!

well this week is going to be busy, but today it started off well. for the past couple months, me & three friends of mine have started doing a "Children Desiring God" Bible study with our preschoolers. Two of us teach the 5 preschoolers the lesson and two of us watch the 5 babies/toddlers in another area of the house. So far it has been great. avery has already memorized about 5 verses and learned so much from the bible stories. today it was our turn to host and the lesson was about Abram & Sarai being called to leave their country for a new land. anyway, after the lesson was over we fed the kids lunch & let them play outside for a while so us moms could visit. the kids found the baby powder and decided since tatum was the youngest one out there, she needed to be powdered. it occupied them for a good 30 minutes and tatum didn't mind all the attention so we just let them do it. tatum was covered... it was pretty hilarious!




tomorrow avery starts back to mother's day out. she seems excited so i am hopeful that it will be a great day for her. yesterday we had promotion sunday at church and she walked right into her new sunday school classroom and just started playing like such a big girl. she barely looked back at me to say goodbye. i am nothing but proud that she's gotten so big and so independent.

brian has officially finished his first master's degree class! praise God... one down and 14 more to go! i am so proud of him. he has been crazy busy lately with volleyball tournaments, writing papers for his master's, and just his regular teaching responsibilities (not to mention two girls who won't let him out of their sight when he's home), but he just trusts God to get him through it all, and i know HE will.

yesterday also was the re-opening of our sanctuary at our church. we've been meeting in the gym for the past 5 months while they renovated our sanctuary... and it was beautiful! it was a very emotional service for me. yes, i'm pregnant, so that may have had something to do with it, but i just balled my eyes out at every song we sang, every story that was told, every point our pastor made in his sermon. i am so thankful to God for how He's blessed us and taught us there for the past 4 years.

tonight i am supposed to take a meal to some friends who just had a brand new baby boy named Price, so i need to get to cookin'!

today was the day

i just need to take a minute for a huge sigh of relief... today was the day they fixed my 3rd period. two weeks into the school year already, but i'm not complaining. i showed up this morning to check my roster (it's been my morning ritual everyday since school started), and viola! yesterday's 39 kids was down to 24!!! and yesterday's 13 special ed kids was down to 7!!! where did all those children go? i have no idea, and i'm not asking around to find out. my class sizes are now manageable, and i actually had fun teaching today!

labor day weekend

Our weekend:
we started out the labor day weekend with no plans, and were OK with that. we were trying to think of something extra fun to do with the girls but not spending any money to do it, but we really hadn't thought of anything.

so we got a call on friday night from brian's coaching buddy's wife who asked if we got the e-vite for their daughter, macy's chuck-e-cheese birthday party the next morning. we didn't get the e-vite, so we had no idea about the party, but thankfully we had no plans, so we decided to go. i had heard parties there were torturous, so we braced ourselves. but the place was empty except for the 10-12 kids for macy's party, and our girls had a blast. avery's favorite game was, of course, the race cars that you get to drive (she's in love with lightning mcqueen right now). tatum liked riding the barney & teletubbies rides in the baby section. it tired them out, so they took a nice long nap that afternoon.

so brian went to work on his master's paper saturday afternoon, and i got a phone call from a friend in our sunday school class who had astros tickets for that night and they weren't able to use them. he said they were good seats & it included the parking pass, so did we want to use them? um, yes!!! so we got all decked out in our astros gear, loaded up the girls and went to minute maid park. we got to park right in front of the entrance and our seats were 5 rows back from the dugout! it was great! our astros hit lots of home runs, which was great b/c there's a big choo-choo train filled with oranges up on the rafters and it goes back & forth whenever we hit a homer! avery loved the train!!! and we won the game so it was a great night!

tatum's first astros game!!!

us girls "on the bench" (i think i was telling brian to just take the picture!)

i know this is a weird pictures of avery, but you can see how close we were to the action...
and we love hunter pence (#9 up to bat).

so our weekend turned out to be lots of fun. yesterday, brian spent the whole day building a nice cover for our sand box in the back yard. we are both thrilled to have that done. now the girls can play outside without being caked in sand everyday!!!

School:
okay, so my 3rd period is still huge, but at least it's down to 39 kids and only 15 are special ed. i got an email today saying it should be fixed by the end of this week, so i am still hoping every day will be the day. overall things have started off well with school. we have our first test friday over the frontier so that will be interesting.

The Girls:
a friend let us borrow her extra crib for the next year or so, so we put it in avery's room and have let tatum try to nap in there a few times. it's mostly for fun b/c they love "napping" in the same room... although they have yet to learn how to actually fall asleep in the same room. they have way too much fun laughing and talking to each other. so after an hour or so, i get tatum and go put her in her own room so they will both actually nap. any tips from you moms whose kids share rooms would be greatly appreciated. we're hoping by december to have tatum completely moved into avery's room and sleeping in there for nighttime & naptime. we'll see.

here's a picture of avery & brian at her first astros game back in the summer of 2006.
my, how she's changed!

first day of school

for the most part, a really good day. my 1st & 2nd period went great. i had a cute little powerpoint all ready to go with family pictures, class stuff, etc. they were respectful and sweet, and i already love them...

...then came 3rd period. first of all, it's a co-teach class which means it's half regular ed & half special ed kids... part of "no child left behind." even though many of these special ed students really need to be in their own "special" class, the government requires them to be in mainstream regular class, so that is co-teach. i've never taught a co-teach before, so i guess i'm due.

the upside is that i get a special ed teacher in there with me to help out (my co-teacher is wonderful - a huge praise!), the downside is that there were 45 students in my 3rd period! seriously, 45 students in a class meant for 30. And 17 of them were special ed. i kid you not, 17 special ed kids. and i'm supposed to teach??? it took 20 minutes just to get them to close their mouths and listen! obviously, there was a huge scheduling mistake, but i just tried to go with it. hopefully tomorrow the wonderful counselors downstairs will remove many of these precious children from my room. just so you know, the class limit for co-teach is 25 and only 10 are allowed to be special ed. that is how it's supposed to work. yeah, we'll see.
so any prayers around 9:20-10:10 every morning would be appreciated.

avery & tatum did great today with gigi (brian's mom) coming over to keep them. God is so good; even though i've been dragging my heels about going back and dreading it, i just felt peace this morning that this is where i am supposed to be this school year. CSHS is where God has me and i am happy to be there. even though i would love to be home with the girls, they are in great care and somehow God is working out this situation for the best for all of us.

by the way, brian's volleyball team is doing really well. it's so cute (don't tell him) but he comes home now and talks volleyball strategy with me and tells me his experiences coaching girls, and it just warms my heart, that he is actually enjoying this!!! with 3 daughters, i think this is only the beginning of his love for girls' sports (again, don't tell him)! i know from experience, girls are so fun to coach and bring such a different attitude and motivation to their athletic pursuits than boys do. anyway, volleyball been a blessing so far and i am grateful that he likes it.

baby girl #3 is still nameless, but she is now letting her mama know she's in there. i love her so much already and it's so fun to "interact" with her... she kicks me, i push her elbow/foot back in.

hopefully i'll have another update soon on my 3rd period. we're supposed to start a group project tomorrow, but with standing room only in that class, i guess i'm going to have to think up another creative assignment.

girls, girls, girls

she's sucking her thumb... is she not the cutest?

wow! another girl on the way! brian's first comment was "how are we going to pay for all the weddings?... forget college, we need to save for weddings." by the way, jennifer, we will sign the paperwork for the arranged marriages next time we see you. can we just marry them all off at the same time?
avery knew the whole time. she kept telling us it was her baby sister in my tummy, and we kept asking her "what if it's a brother?" and she just said "no, it's a sister."
i am just excited to watch these 3 girls grow up together. i've asked several people who are from families of all sisters if they are close with their sisters, and so many have told me that they are not very close today. it really made me sad, but i just decided i am going to pray everyday that God will let my girls grow up being the best of friends and stay that way their whole lives. i never had a sister, so i have no idea what it's like, but i do know i always wanted a sister. i remind avery & tatum pretty often how lucky they are to have each other.
God knows what we all need... brian & i (thank you Lord) need 3 little girls to raise!

thanks edouard (or however you spell it)!

all we got was a lot of rain. a little bit of thunder and lightning last night, but just alot of rain today. since every place in houston closed down for the day (seriously!), we couldn't get any of my errands run, so i decided to make the best of it. we put on our raincoats and crocs, took our rubber duckies out of the tub, and let them race down the river that is our street (we live in a small cul-de-sac, which is great b/c there are never any cars driving by except our neighbors). anyway, tatum's big pink ducky consistantly beat avery's smaller pink ducky down the river. since i let avery choose which ducky to use, i didn't feel bad that hers kept losing. i didn't get a picture of the duck race b/c i was worried i would drop my camera in the water, but here are some pics of our front yard being hit by edouard.


in the above picture, you can see in the far left corner the "river" of water that our duckies raced on.

tatum's favorite word right now is "dis!!!"(this). the three exclamation points afterwards are important to let you know she really means it. also, today she dropped the baby bath in the tub and said "uh-oh." it was so cute.

okay, avery is another story. i try to remember all the funny things she says, but there are just too many. here's a couple i remember from this week:

i was showing her the pretty jewelry in the james avery catalog i got in the mail and of course i mentioned that it is called "james AVERY" and isn't that cool? the next day when we looked at it again, she called it the "james mama" catalog!

long story short... we are trying to figure out if she is big enough to ride in a booster seat instead of a regular car seat, so i took out the measuring tape and told her i needed to measure how tall she is to see if she meets the requirement (she does). anyway, a few minutes later, she asked me if she could borrow that thing because she wanted to "pleasure" me. i knew i shouldn't laugh too hard, but when i told brian later, we both died laughing! she still walks around the house with it "pleasuring" things. ha!