Catching Up

We've had a great last couple of weeks including fun visitors, time at the park and good old fashioned trick-or-treating. Yea! Let's just get you caught up on life...

1. Kari!!! She spent the weekend attending a wedding with her boyfriend, Jason. On their way back through to San Antonio they were able to take a couple of hours off the road and visit with us! This was our first, and much anticipated, opportunity to meet Jason. We enjoyed our time, short as it may have been, and packed as much catching up in as possible...


2. Micaiah has been to the park many a time, but usually we don't stop to play. You see, it's part of her almost ready for bed time. Well we've had some absolutely gorgeous days as of late so we decided to take advantage. I'm certain we'll be taking advantage of many more of these days in the future. Micaiah absolutely LOVES being outside...

3. Erin's Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Louis were in town over the weekend to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a church they attended here in the Houston area. We were blessed to have an evening of time to get caught up on life with them and introduce them to Micaiah. I wasn't bright enough to get the camera out that evening, but we're hoping to see them again around Christmas. We'll definitely get a picture then!

4. Micaiah got to be a fish for Halloween! She makes a pretty cute fish if you ask me. We went to an event at Christ the King called Trunk or Treat. It was a great atmosphere for her first Halloween experience. In addition to candy, they have a variety of games set up for the kids to play. She enjoyed seeing all of the kids in their costumes and even played a duck game. Well, really she just pushed the little rubber ducky around in the kiddie pool, but she enjoyed it! :)

Old Mac Donald's Farm

Happy fall everyone!!!

Today was a great day! Despite the overcast skies, the temperature was a refreshing 77 degrees and we hit the hay. Almost literally! We met some dear friends - Tamara, Shelby, and Seth - for a couple of hours of barnyard goodness at Old Mac Donald's Farm. Can I just say Micaiah LOVED it!?!

We saw may of your typical barnyard friends - cows, sheep, goats, hens, pigs, donkeys - and some of your not so typical barnyard friends - emu anyone? Micaiah got up close and personal with the goats. In your typical goat encounter fashion one of her furry friends tried to eat her super cute jacket. (Grandma Witbrodt gave her this jacket when she was born and Micaiah has been dying to wear it ever since... FINALLY!)

After a quick picnic lunch we headed to the pumpkin patch. Talk about good times. Micaiah LOVES her pumpkin!!! She was just all smiles - except for the family pic of course. After coming home and taking a nap all she wanted to do was inspect her pumpkin. How do you tell an 8 month old that pumpkins don't last forever - and that her dad wants to cut into it with a knife and gut it? Oh well. Treasure the good times while they last!

Thanks to our good friends for sharing a part of their day. I'm including a few pictures so you all can share, too!

Weekend Visitors

Hooray for visitors! Aunt Nora flew in to town for a nice long weekend and we had a blast. Micaiah was visibly distraught when we told her it was time to take Aunt Nora to the airport! I think she enjoyed having such a captive audience during play time.

Since her departure Micaiah has developed a deep emotional attachment to a book Aunt Nora gave her: "Another Monster at the End of This Book". (Think "There's a Monster at the End of This Book" featuring loveable furry old Grover.) She LOVES to read it and laughs all the way through... until Grover and Elmo scare each other. Then she gets a bit upset. And don't try to put the book down thinking she'll be happier because she wants to read it over and over whether she likes it or not! We don't understand. Maybe you do?

Hanging with Aunt Nora:

A dear friend from college also drifted through town this past weekend. Nina's husband Chris had a medical exam in the Houston area so the two of them made a small getaway out of it. Chris is an Aggie, so taking in a football game at Kyle Field was a must. Much to Nina's delight, that meant watching K State come home with a win. A house divided to say the least! The bonus for me was Sunday lunch and a short afternoon of catching up on life. For those of you who know Nina, I was able to snap a picture of her barely-there pregnancy profile. Yea! Good times with old friends!

Pictures

I came across these pictures and realized I never posted any of them, so here you go!

A Little Taste of Home

“America is my country and Paris is my hometown.”
-Gertrude Stein

Most of you know we spent our first two years of marriage living and working in the Slovak Republic. Our lives have been undoubtedly shaped by the relationships forged and experiences lived in that country. Our outlook on life, and the people woven through it, has been altered. If you were to look closely, you would find pieces of our hearts scattered accross that land.

We were blessed to have one of those pieces spend time with us last week. Zuska, a student of ours, made a brief stop in Houston after spending her summer in the D.C. area. It was a breath of fresh air to hear the tales of where life has taken her and God is leading her. She is a woman after God's heart.

Thank you Zuska!

After the Storm

Well, Hurricane Ike came and went...

What can we say?? It was a hurricane. First, thanks to all of you who were saying prayers on our behalf and on behalf of Houstonians and Galvestonians!! Please keep the prayers coming, there are many, many people who do not have power. The calamity of this hurricane will most likely be seen in the aftermath as people try to survive on no power, no a/c and limited cell service.

Know that the three of us are okay! In fact, we are part of the lucky 5% who actually have power...and for that we are incredibly thankful! For those of you who would like the details: the three of us slept on our bottom floor [remember there are no basements in Southeast Texas] in a interior bathroom. It was like a crazy campout! The winds were clocked to be 80-90 miles an hour over a four to five hour period. We were flooded with 8 inches of rain in five hours and many of the bayous around the city flooded. As the hurricane literally passed over the top of the house...the house itself moaned in agony. Needless to say, neither Erin or I slept all that well.

As I'm sure you've seen, Galveston Island is absolutely decimated. They're continuing to evacuate people off the island. Keep the prayers coming for those people. Downtown Houston, at present, is shut down by Homeland Security...we're not sure when that will reopen. We'll just have to wait and see.

People here are thankful for a cold front which blew in last night!! This will allow people to open their windows and sleep in a bit more comfort. Neighbors and helping neighbors as communities begin to clean up and rebuild. It's amazing to see people who've never spoken spend an afternoon mucking debris out of the gutter. Amazing.

Just so you know, we don't yet have Internet. We're bumming off someone, who's bumming off someone else. So, this will be our only post for a while. Much love and many blessings to you all.

Preparation

Ike is well on his way and we're well on our way to being ready.

Very few tasks still await out attention here at home. We'll tape our windows tomorrow (No, we won't board up... who wants to scale the extention ladder we don't own up to the third floor of our home carrying a large piece of plywood? We didn't think so!) and fill our tubs with water once showering is completed and wait.

There's not much more we can do! We (Houstonians) have been asked to stay put if we're not under a mandatory evacuation order and we're not. There are plenty of people living in coastal areas who face real life or death situations who NEED to get to safety. We'll leave the roadways to them.

We've had many an offer from friends both near and far for shelter and depending on the outcome (ie. power outages, etc.) we may be knocking on their door within the next few days.

Time will tell.

And so will Ike.

Closing out Summer

Well, sort of. You wouldn't really know August has come and gone and September is in full swing. It's still 90 some odd degrees outside and no relief in sight. Ahh Texas.

The West family had a weekend packed full of fun and excitement. Might as well send summer out with a bang, eh? It all started Friday night with a night out for Mom and Dad at the Cardinal's game. We were able to get caught up on baseball and life with friends Tim, Meghan and Shawn. It's good to have friends who appreciate your home team!

Saturday found us at the game again. Only this time Micaiah came along! This was her first "official" Cardinal's game. She had seen quite a few on TV, but never been in the thick of it all. She wore her Cardinal's red and rooted the team on about as well as any 6 month old could. We didn't stay through the entire game. She'd had enough by the time the 6th inning was over. For that matter, we had too! The Cards were down 8 to 3 and it was, well, depressing.

Sunday brought more fun! "Ouch!" was the word of the day. Micaiah's first tooth finally reared it's beautiful head. As we have allowed her to get in the probably not so great habit of chewing on our fingers when we nothing better is present, Mom and Dad have paid the price. But her tooth is oh so very cute! Catching a picture may prove difficult, but no doubt we will try...

Monday was Labor Day and labor we did not! We did a whole lot of hanging around and just being family. Micaiah has found a new favorite past time - playing ball. We played a lot of ball yesterday. And here's where your pictures come. Be certain to watch from the begining as Micaiah has a very important lesson to share with you! Who could resist playing ball with this bundle of fun?