Mommy Homework

I was given an assignment by the twin’s preschool program two months ago to write an essay about them so the student teachers could get to know them better. I had this assignment last year and thought it would be an easy update. As the due date approached I looked back at what I wrote last year. Amazingly a lot of what I wrote before still applied so I put off my assignment a little longer...and then forgot about it. I got a personal call from the teacher last week wondering what had happened and I promised the essays soon. I am glad there was no grade on this because I was 3 weeks late from the original due date, which was graciously post poned due to the hurricane.

Joshua is my little helper. He loves to help at home and likes things in a neat and orderly fashion.
Often he is the last one sleeping in the morning. I think he needs just a little extra sleep than Matthew. I often here Matthew whispering to him, “Wake Up!” when he sleeps in extra late.
Since this summer we have worked on computer skills and now he can use a mouse instead of just watching his brother play the computer games.
He is the middle child of five children. He has an older sister and brother, and then a younger twin and a baby brother.
Upside down is how he thinks best. He loves to balance on his head so I put him in a little sports gymnastics class this fall.
Although his hair doesn’t stick up as much as it use too, it is still the best way to tell him apart from his brother.

Everyday Joshua wants to go wake up his baby brother. He is very caring, and is always willing to help. He is a very good brother.
This year he wants to be Darth Vader for Halloween. I wonder if I should be concerned as a mother that he always wants to be the bad guy.
However, he says that when he grows up he wants to be a police man to put bad guys in jail so maybe that makes me feel better.
In public he may seem shy, but at home we have a problem with his volume and I always ask him to use an inside voice instead of shouting everything he says.
Now that his older siblings have big bikes, Joshua has a bike with training wheels but he still prefers to ride his tricycle without pedaling.
Getting dressed is always a surprise. Usually he picks red shirts because that is his favorite color, but sometimes he wants variety and puts on Matthew’s clothes. That always throws me for a loop.
Today he is wearing his pants inside out and backwards. Once preschool starts I will have to be more careful on how he is dressed before he walks out of the house
Oreos, chips, cookies, brownies, yogurts, and corn dogs are among his favorite foods.
Now that the boys are almost 5 years old, I am so glad that I have one more year with them before they go to kindergarten.


Matthew’s hair is matted. This is an important fact to remember when you are around my boys.
At this moment Matthew just finished his jobs without help and without being asked. It sounds amazing, but I know what he is up too, he wants to play Xbox.
This past summer we worked on reading a little and he has a good memory for the sounds of the letters.
Today he woke up early and got dressed to go on a bike ride and drop his older siblings off at school.
He is very self sufficient and knows how to help himself and to get what he wants/needs.
Every night Matthew asks me to help him brush his teeth. He doesn’t want any cavities when he goes to see the dentist this month.
When playing soccer he likes to be the goalie because then he can use his hands.

Every day he loves to hide behind the couch and scare people when they come in the room.
This past year he has had two surgeries. His hear murmur was fixed and his tonsils were removed. He was so good, and his health has been much better.
He is only 9 minutes younger than his twin brother. But he has always been a ½ pound lighter and a ½ inch taller.
I have learned to cook around his picky habits. He doesn’t like sauces so he eats his spaghetti plain and really hates it when we have casseroles for dinner.
Now with a little practice the twins can sing some songs, but it has taken a lot of repetition help them learn their ABC’s.
Green is still his favorite color. He has on a green shirt today, he uses the green cups and he has green crocs.
This summer he learned how to swim. He has always loved he water, and now he will be able to go down the waterslides.
On his birthday he has already planned to have a Star Wars Cake and can list all the presents he wants. We have been counting down for his and Joshua’s birthday since day sixty eight.
Normally Matthew has a smile on his face.

The Fence that would not Fall Down-

We have survived! Of course you wouldn’t have expected otherwise -- we are not in a flood zone, and we are far enough from the coast to avoid catastrophic damage. We didn't escape unscathed, however. We have some roof damage and debris to clean up. We were positive that our fence would not survive the night, so we were shocked to wake up and find it standing stubbornly. It's got a good lean to it, and we're trying to figure out if it was leaning into or away from the wind. Here is my report of our dance with Ike:

I laid awake most of Friday night listening to the pounding rain and wind against the windows and roof. We had a few power surges in the early evening, but the power finally went out around 2:45 am with a big blow somewhere close by. Apparently that was one of the moments that I was sleeping, but Scott saw it. I woke up around 3:30 to running water; I got up and checked the windows, but decided it must just be the water running off the house. By 5:30 there was a rhythmic pounding on the roof, and everything was so loud I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep.

From my research it appears that the eye was just east of us and we were experiencing the heavy winds of the western eye wall. Scott and I both got up and checked around the house. We found water leaking in the laundry room, and some water leakage in Alexander’s room. Up in the attic the water was leaking through the seams of the boards. Over the next hour we gathered all our trash cans and empty Rubbermaid bins and strategically placed them under the leaks.

As a side note even though we have roof damage I can’t believe how blessed we are. We got another round of rain Saturday night that woke me up so I went to check things out. Another leak had started in the middle of Alexander’s room so I went up to see if I could get a bucket under it. Up in our attic we have very limited access to just in the middle, however the new leak was inaccessible, and it made me realize how blessed we were to have our roof damage right where we could contain it.

Around 7:00 am Saturday, as it was just starting to get light, we woke the kids up to see the heavy winds. Before we had gone to bed the night before it looked like the eye would pass over around 7, so we thought we would get a little break. However, since the eye passed just to the east of us, instead of a break we stayed in the path of the eastern eye wall for the next few hours. Things didn’t seem to let up all morning and I was wondering why we got the kids up so early.

Everyone took turns outside to felt he gusts of wind. There were shingles all over our yard and tree limbs scattered. We even found a large bush roots and all. Looking at other neighbors roofs it was interesting to see there was no pattern. Some people had a few missing shingles, while others were down to the plywood. It looks like above our bedroom we are missing a good section of shingles, and Above Alexander’s room and the laundry room we are missing a big section of shingles and the plywood is exposed too.

Our water and power were out, and every 15 minutes the kids asked if it was time to open the M&M’s yet. We tried making calls but without power we only had our cell phones, and couldn’t make any outgoing calls. Any incoming calls that we tried to answer were cut off after 10 seconds. We got a few text messages out, but that was all. We passed the morning napping, reading books, playing board games and even watching a movie on the laptop before the battery went out. Around eleven the wind and rain started to let up and it finally stopped around 3:30pm.

We took a drive and assess the neighborhood damage. We found some trees snapped in half, trees on power lines, flooded roads, lots of roofs like ours and amazingly a lot of fences that had blown over. For the last few years we have watched our fence start to lean because of the steep slope behind it. We thought for sure the fence wasn’t going to survive. It is still standing, not straight up but it never completely toppled over either. We are shocked and slightly disappointed; as it desperately needs to be replaced.

We kept a bike lock on the fridge, but around lunch time we set up the stove in the garage and made quesadillas. We planned out how and when to use our food and were ready for a week or two without power. By dinner, we got a break in the rain and set our grill back up on the patio to grill our chicken.

The kids were looking forward to nightfall all day because they had great plans. Luckily our water came back in the afternoon so it wasn’t too hard to clean up dinner. After clean up we started our game of hide and seek. Everyone got their flashlights and we hid in the dark. I got stuck with Alex who almost always gave me away. Once I hid in the pantry and gave him a cookie which bought me a little bit of time, but once he started pounding on the door, Matthew ran down the stairs to find me.

Following our games we ate ice-cream and root beer floats by candlelight (actually it was a lantern but that just didn’t sound right, lantern light?) It was Joshua’s turn for family prayers and he said some interesting things. He asked to bless the storm and that he was thankful for the damage. Apparently we played up the damage thing a little too much on our drive earlier that day when we got excited every time we saw a tree knocked over or fence blown down. I guess once the news turns off, from a kid’s point of view the hurricane was a lot of fun.
Like I mentioned before I was up a lot last night, so when I heard little people walking around this morning I ignored them and tried to sleep a little longer. All of the sudden, all the lights and fans turned on. Our power was back. I am pretty certain that Matthew was up this morning checking all of the lights, so when the power came back everything was turned on. We had some great plans today on how to cook our roast, and wanted to experiment with making a cake on the camp stove. It was nice to just put the roast in the crock pot, but Scott decided to go ahead and make his cake anyway. We are doing great, although we have some work to do today on the roof before any more rain comes through. Thanks to all that were concerned and I hope this update gives you a bit more information. Later I will post more pictures and video on our web page!

yIKEs!

Currently outside it is a little windy. However that is to be expected since a hurricane is about to make landfall in the next few hours. Today was an interesting day because the schools were closed, Scott stayed home form work and most of the stores shut their doors around noon. We spent the morning cleaning up the yard of any possible projectiles and put everything in the garage. It was gorgeous weather today. Breezy and not humid, so I was glad to get out and work in my garden which was overgrown and infested with stink bugs. After the work was done it was time to play, but really we just spent the afternoon watching the news and waiting for the action to start.

We heard from Craig and Cherise around dinnertime, and they had already lost power. They live in Pearland which is about 40 miles north of the coast and said that it was windy but not raining yet. They have boarded up their windows are prepared to wait the storm out.

Because we live over 80 miles inland we haven’t been too worried. We have been calm and what I thought was reassuring to the kids. Around dinner time when the kids were supposed to be cleaning up I was surprised to see Matthew carrying a bunch of blankets downstairs. When I questioned what he was doing he said that it was his stuff for the car for “when our house breaks up.” I guess he had been watching a little too much news. He showed me his pile; he had a pillow a blanket, his Pajamas and a blanket for Joshua too. I thought we had reassured our kids enough that we were safe, but I spent a little extra time with Matthew making sure he was alright when he went to sleep tonight.

After dinner our family enjoyed the great weather outside and the beautiful sunset as a result from the outer bands of the hurricane. It was weird to know that a hurricane is coming from the south and all the clouds were moving in the wrong direction.

We expect the eye wall of the storm to hit during the night and pass around 5:30. We are planning to get up for the sunrise so hopefully we will still have power and keep you updated. If not Samantha will be excited to break into the 72 hour kit and open our 3 lb bag of M&M’s.

Thanks Uncle Mikey!

We have decided to let the kids ride bikes to school this year, despite the fact that my new car would help accommodate a carpool. However, a week before school started I was informed that Jacob’s $3 garage sale bike was broken. He has been ready for a new bike since last year, but I thought the little bargain that I got last fall was going to buy us a little more time.

When Samantha was 3 years old we bought her first bike, we bought it a little big at the time but we never expected it to last as long as it did. She obviously got her use out of it. Last summer she started asking for a new bike, so we had her start saving up. With the help of generous gifts around her birthday she put her all her money together and got her bike. With all the work that Samantha put in, it was hard as parents just to go out and buy Jacob a new bike despite the desperate need. Although we give our kids a gracious allowance, that wouldn’t be fast enough, so we started brain storming. Jacob wanted to put up a lemonade stand, but I had a better idea…

Jacob sold CD’s door to door. Of course we only targeted people we knew, but I think it was really good for him to approach people and tell them about the great new CD that his Uncle Mike just produced. Mike has put together a great collection of original piano solo hymn arrangements, and some of his own songs. I would like to thank all of our friends and neighbors that helped contribute to this great cause, and if anyone feels bad that we didn’t knock on your door you can just go straight to the source to buy (and listen to the music) www.michaelethington.com or let me know and I will get some more.

At first Jacob really wanted me to help do the talking, but after awhile he got the hang of it. Since we were subsidizing the bike anyway I just let him put all the money from the CD’s in his savings jar. He thought he was rich and kept talking about all the things that he could buy. We had to keep reminding him how much his bike was going to cost and that he wouldn’t have any money left over. This week he finally got his new bike and he willing turned over his jar full of hard earned money. He has been riding his bike to and from school every day and loves it. Thanks Uncle Mikey!