Fall is here

Technically, fall has been here for a month, but it finally seems like it is here. It's been in the high 40s and low 50s in the mornings this week, so it feels like fall. Really a nice change after 5 months of summer!

First things first. On Saturday, October 11th, my Aunt Pat decided that enough was enough and it was time to trade in the malfunctioning body she had for a new one with wings and a halo. My mom and dad were able to get the last two tickets on a flight to Boston (Red Sox fans have no perspective on what's important) and they were able to attend the funeral. My cousins did an amazing job and the service was a wonderful tribute to a great lady. Rest in peace, Aunt Pat. We miss you.

Back in Houston, the days are flying by. Last weekend, Brady played in his first tournament since the World Series in July. They had about half their guys, plus some fill-ins. They didn't do great, but it was good to get back into the swing of things.

Last night, KC attended her very first school dance. (Note that this is Brady's third year in middle school and I never know their middle school had dances). It was a costume dance, and KC went with a group of her girl friends and had a great time.


I'll try to take some better pictures of her costume tonight. I asked Brady if he wanted to go to the dance and he said he would rather play catcher without a cup (OK, he didn't actually say that, but the look he gave me did.)

We are all ready for Halloween at our house. We baked our desserts last night for the Langston Halloween feast, and both KC and Brady are going to hand out candy with me while Abby and Bill are going trick-or-treating with a couple of her friends. Brady has a new Grim Reaper outfit (he's grown about 4 inches in the past year) and KC and I will work on our scariest looks. The oleanders have grown enough to obscure the doorway, and the spooky music and fog machine are ready to go. We never scare the little kids who come trick-or-treating, but the big ones had best beware!

Happy Halloween to all!

Amazing Women

Yesterday was my mother's birthday. My thought was to write something about how much I admire and respect my amazing mom, but events are such that I feel compelled to write about another amazing woman, My Aunt Pat.

Patricia Sullivan is actually my mother's cousin, so my first cousin once removed, but she's always been Aunt Pat to me. Although she was born in Bay City, Texas (her father was working in Texas for a brief time) she (and my cousins Christine and Paula) grew up in Charlestown, Massachusetts. My family moved to Texas in 1977 for my father's work, and there is no doubt that the move was the most difficult on my mother. My mother is devoted to family, and she would happily have spent every holiday in a house filled to the rafters with relatives. To leave that behind to go 2,000 miles from everyone you know is a frightening thing. But Aunt Pat always helped my Mom feel connected.

Aunt Pat, Uncle Paul, Chris and Paula visited us several times in Texas, one of very few of our relatives who were able to make the trip down. When we visited Massachusetts (annually for my Mom and Dad, only a few times for me) they were always ready to meet us somewhere to catch up. No matter how much time had passed since the last time we had seen them, we could talk for hours about family, school, the world . . . anything and everything.

Aunt Pat was also our family historian. Mom knew very little about her heritage, but Aunt Pat took on the task of digging through old photos and newspapers, birth records and death records, researching our past. She and Christine put together family trees and shared records, photos, and information with us so we could all know more about where we had come from. Once again, Aunt Pat was our connection.

When the historical record led back to Ireland, our amazing cousins hopped on a plane and found our family's roots in Skibbereen. I don't know if they did it through research or by knocking on doors, but they found our cousins still living in Ireland. These cousins were so taken with the Sullivans that when Christine married in 2006, they flew over to Boston to celebrate with her. We were so excited to meet our Irish cousins that we planned how we would find them in the hotel by listening for their distinctive accent. We arrived at breakfast the first morning, and we had no trouble finding them as a handsome gentleman walked right up to my mom and asked, "Are you here for the Sullivan wedding?" Amazed, we told him we were indeed. He responded that my mother was the very image of his wife. Imagine cousins separated by many generations and an ocean, and the kinship still shows. A connection to family from far away, again made possible by Aunt Pat.

I am so thankful to my Aunt and cousins for everything they have given me. The weekend we spent at Christine's wedding in 2006 was one of the most wonderful experiences I have ever had. My children were able to spend time with an extended family that they never knew. Aunt Pat made us all feel welcome and reminded me that even 30 years later, Massachusetts will always be a part of me . . .


Here is Aunt Pat walking Christine down the aisle.



One of my favorite pictures, here is Aunt Pat dancing a jig surrounded by family and friends.

I am thankful to them for the gift of a family history I can share with my children so they can know and be proud of their heritage.

My mother never had a sister, so having her cousin Pat in her life has been a true gift. Better than a sister, Pat has been a lifelong friend to my mother, and in so many ways, Pat has been my Mom's connection to her family, her history, and her home.

My Aunt has been very ill for a while now, and she is currently in the hospital. My mother tells me that this fight may be more than even Pat can win. My prayers are with Aunt Pat, and with Christine and Paula, that they might have the strength to deal with whatever comes. My heart breaks at the thought of losing my amazing Aunt Pat . . . I can't imagine how great the loss would be to those who were fortunate enough to be even closer to her.

We love you, Aunt Pat.

Getting back to normal

Things are getting back to normal around here. We started school again this week. The city came and cut down the tree that fell and we are waiting for all the debris to get hauled away. Bill's mom and dad have been staying with us this week (they had been in New Braunfels, but his mom had several appointments and a biopsy at MD Anderson, so it was better for them to be close to the medical center). Happily, she's doing well after the biopsy (it was a spot on her lung, prayers welcome), and their power was finally restored last night so they were able to go home today. My sister and niece got their power back early this week, Jill went back to school Wednesday, Sierra on Thursday, so everything is getting back on track.

Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out those who lost everything to Ike. After suffering from what was essentially a minor inconvenience (loss of power for less than a week), I can't imagine how hard it is for those who lost their houses, their jobs, or are waiting to hear whether a loved one has been located.

My friend Sandra (who lost her house on Crystal Beach) has a very eloquent husband who wrote that they are looking at it not as an end, but as the beginning of a new journey. Our prayer is that the journey of all those who are suffering from Ike leads them to something better than they had before, and reminds us all of what is really important. Life goes on.

And on a completely different note, many thanks to the man who always helps us get things back to normal. The man who can fix anything, figure out anything, and make anything work. What would we ever do without you? Happy Birthday, Dad!

The aftermath of the storm . . .

Well, as you may have heard, Hurricane Ike hit our area hard earlier this week. The storm came through overnight Friday. The power went off about 11:30 pm. The kids camped out on the floor of our room, so we would all be together in case something happened. The wind was so loud it sounded as if the windows would blow right into the house. At one point we heard a loud noise that sounded like fireworks going off, then a loud crash. The house was intact, though, and with no lights there was no way to tell what the crash was. We dozed off and on through the night, never really getting to sleep with the sound of banshees howling in the backyard. Things started to quiet down about 4am, and most of us drifted off to sleep. When the sun came up the next morning, Abby was the first one to venture into the living room and she immediately shouted "Oh my gosh!" We ran into the living room with our fingers crossed . . .

Thankfully, the damage was in the backyard. We looked out the window and a large tree from the boardwalk behind our house had crashed into part of our pool (the fireworks we'd heard in the night).

It was still raining and windy, so Bill and I grabbed our rain ponchos and ventured out to see how bad the damage was. Fortunately, it cracked high enough on the trunk that it missed our fence. It fell right on our waterfall, though, and we are pretty sure it killed the little palm tree behind the waterfall and probably the palm thing that matched the one you can still see that was on the other side. There was a lot of debris in the pool including a few shingles, but we don't think they came from our house, so we are thankful for that as well.

With the power still out, we packed the contents of the refrigerator into a pair of coolers, emptied a couple of bags of ice we'd bought on Friday and waited for the rain to stop. By lunchtime, it was still raining pretty hard, so Bill decided to cook burgers on our camping grill on the front porch.

Once the rain stopped, of course it started to get warm and humid in the house. We went for a walk around the neighborhood to get a bit of a breeze and see what the damage had been from the night before. We think a small tornado must have gone through our area because most areas were like ours, tree branches and trees down, a few areas had no damage at all, and a few had pretty major damage. We saw some huge trees down, fences torn up, and bushes blown over. Some houses had siding ripped completely off and some had huge sections of roof torn away. The dance studio where the girls dance had part of the roof ripped off and the floor completely flooded (which is really sad - they don't know when or if they will be able to resume classes). It reaffirmed what we felt when we woke up that morning - that we were thankful to have our lives and our house, and it could have been much, much worse.

My parents and Jill and Sierra had all lost power, too. We turned on our tiny portable TV (which won't work after February 2009) and heard reports that it could be a week or two before power would be restored. We couldn't find out anything about school closings, though, because the crawl on the bottom of the TV was too tiny and our eyes are too old. We saw a few images of Surfside beach virtually washed away, and Galveston beach almost completely destroyed. The beach house my sister rented this summer was on Crystal Beach and was completely wiped out. It was really sad.

When we got back, we started the clean up.



After a couple of hours, when it was clear the power would not be on anytime soon, we decided to entertain ourselves.

We played Monopoly as the lights dimmed:



The kids built a church out of dominoes:



And we sweated and wondered when the power would come back on. Finally, on Saturday night the power came on for 3 minutes, and we rejoiced, but alas, it went back out.

Saturday night the kids slept in our room again because it was cooler than the upstairs and they could share flashlights to find the bathroom in the night (fortunately, we never lost water!). We didn't sleep much Saturday night because it was just too warm to get comfortable.

Sunday morning rolled around and now our phones weren't working. Apparently the generator for the phones had failed. Cell phone service was poor, so we paced around the house wondering how to pass the time and stay cool. Another meal of burgers on the camp stove and baked Lays potato chips. By midday it was 82 degrees with about 90% humidity in the house, so we decided to walk the neighborhood to see if the streets had cleared enough to drive. They looked better, so we decided to take a chance and see if we could get wireless Internet anywhere. Our goal was to find out if we had to report to school the next day. We drove to Highway 6 and saw lots of cars and no traffic signals. We drove a few blocks but no Internet access.

We drove home and waited. And waited. Finally, I called a friend of mine who works at another high school in Fort Bend. He let us know that we wouldn't have school until Wednesday! We decided enough was enough, and we piled the kids, a few clothes, our cooler, and Cookie the bunny into the Suburban (which, thankfully, was full of gas) and headed for Bill's parents vacation house in New Braunfels to join Bill's parents who had evacuated Thursday (smart people). My parents, still without power, decided to stick it out (although they did find a Chinese food restaurant nearby with power, so they were able to get a hot meal).

The kids were so happy to be re-acquainted with electricity!



Bill and I were happy to be re-acquainted with air conditioning. It was the first good night sleep we'd had since the storm hit.

Well, short story long, we hung out at the Bandit (the neighborhood the vacation house is in) for a few days. On Tuesday night, we heard from our wonderful friends and neighbors that power had been restored (finally!). Wednesday we packed up and headed home, where we now have electricity, air conditioning, and Internet access!! My mom and dad also have power restored, and Jill and Sierra are staying with them waiting for their power to come back on.

In the meantime, we did some Christmas shopping in San Marcus and the girls learned how to latch hook, so they are both working on new little rugs for their rooms. I got some cross stitch done, and a bit of work on a baby blanket I'm working on. The kids are currently watching Spongebob on Nickelodeon, trying to catch up on all the TV they missed over the weekend.

Tomorrow we try to cut up the tree in the backyard and see if we can get the pool cleaned up. We stocked up on groceries in New Braunfels so we have enough food in the house to last us through the weekend, and we don't have to brave the enormous lines in the grocery stores that are open (the power is back on, but a lot of the workers left town or don't have power at home or gas in their cars).

We are so thankful to all of you for your thoughts and prayers! We are thankful that we escaped with minor damage, and very aware that it could have been worse. Our prayers go out to all those who lost everything in Galveston and other coastal areas. I'm sure there will be many efforts in our community to assist those people, and we will do whatever we can to help.

Be safe wherever you are! We are safe and blessed here in Houston.

Take a hike, Ike

If you've seen the news lately, you may have noticed that we seem to have a hurricane bearing down on us in Houston. It's supposed to hit late today, so we are making some preparations. We have enough to junk food to last us a few days even without power (a few weeks if we don't lose power). I'm backing up files from my computer and packing photographs into plastic tubs. Other than that, we should be fine. We're far enough from the coast that we won't get flooding from that. The only flooding risk would be from lots of rain, and the storm should move through quickly enough that we won't get more than we can handle.

My mom, dad, sister, and niece are all staying put, too. Bill's parents live closer to the coast and they were in a mandatory evacuation zone, so they've gone to the vacation house in New Braunfels. We should all be fine.

Praying that the storm doesn't do too much damage to the area and that no lives are lost. Take care to all, and I'll post updates when it's all over. :-)

First day of school 2008

It's the first day of school 2008. All three kids were in good spirits this morning. Brady, perhaps a bit less than the girls, but I suppose by 8th grade you know too much of the reality of school to be enthused by its newness.

Anyway, they all ate bacon and cinnamon rolls for breakfast, then posed for the first day picture:


Abby's school is the closest, so we dropped her off first. I knew this was going to be the hardest one, because she'll always be the baby to me. I parked and walked her up to school, and as we got closer, I think it suddenly hit her that she's going to be all alone in this school. For the first time ever she won't have her big sister in the same school with her. She was a very brave little girl, and did her best to put on her bravest face.


So, after tearing up on the walk back to the car, it was time to take the big kids. KC wanted me to park and walk her up, too. Brady would have been happy if I'd dropped them a block away. We compromised on me dropping them off in the circle drive at school and taking pictures through the window.

I couldn't quite get them both looking at the same time, though.


When did they get to be so grown up? (sniff)


If you think I'm kidding about Brady growing up, here's a picture from me dropping him off on the first day of school last year:




I had no time to miss them right then, though, as Bill called me on my cell phone to let me know that they were looking for me in the library to fix a problem that I was pretty sure just needed a computer reboot (I was right, by the way).

I hope that all goes well for all three of them today, that they can find their classes, and that their teachers are good to them. No matter what age they are, I guess a mother's prayer is always the same. Please let them learn. Please let the other kids be nice to them. Please grant them strength, confidence, and courage. Watch over them and take care of them. I know they have to struggle a bit to grow, but please make their struggles as painless as possible. Make sure school is a place that they don't mind going every day. And bring them safely home every afternoon.


Hope everyone has a great start to whatever adventures the fall brings them (school, work, or just something fun and interesting). :-)

The end of summer 2008 . . .

This has been the last weekend before the kids officially start back to school.

It rained all last week, so the kids were stuck indoors during their last free week, so Saturday, we went to the park for a while and rode bikes . . .



saw an alligator in the pond (he's just a juvenile - maybe 4-5 feet long)


played some baseball (I don't think Bill is really trying his hardest to score here):



swam, shopped, KC went to her book group meeting (little bookworm), and generally hung out.

Today, we slept in, ate bacon, went to late mass, then went to the 10th anniversary reception of the St. Laurence Weekday children's program! Brady was a member of the very first bridge class to attend, and both KC and Abby attended for a couple of years. We had a great time, and everyone told Brady how big he's gotten which made him happy (LOL). We saw Brady's old teacher, Miss Virginia, and KC's teacher, Miss Nisha. We also learned that Abby's teacher, Miss Cheryl, lost her battle with cancer in 2006 (GRHS).

It was wonderful to see how the program has grown over the past decade. Miss Becky still runs it and looks no different now than she did 10 years ago.


We came home, ate some pot roast, and the kids are showered and the backpacks are packed for the first day of school. KC is very nervous about starting middle school tomorrow. She attended sixth grade orientation on Friday, and we dropped off her medical notes and epipen with the nurse. She practiced her locker combination and brought home a few textbooks that stay at home. Abby also attended a Meet the Teacher on Friday and just loved her new teacher, Mrs. Huckaby. Praying this will be a good school year for everyone!!