oh no.

No. Please tell me this isn't serious.



Seriously. I'm embarrassed for them.

Recent pictures

These are just a few random pictures that I've taken recently and thought I'd share.  

Caroline playing dress up.  Yes, she has on a sleeping beauty dress with a cowboy hat.  And a baby doll on her lap wearing a cowboy hat of her own.  

"I'm 3!"  

Caroline and Jeff getting ready for a bike ride in the neighborhood.  

We were lucky enough to spend a couple of days at Lake Rosemound at the camp of some our friends.  This is Caroline and Jeff headed down to the lake for an evening ride in the kayak.  

Gustav

Well, we weathered Hurricane Gustav and I'm finally getting a chance to share a little about it and post some pictures from a crazy few days.  We decided to stay at our house for the hurricane.  Being from Baton Rouge, I haven't been through any storms here that felt especially threatening.  There have been occasions where we've done without electricity for a few days, but beyond some wind and rain, I couldn't remember a time where it felt dangerous to be in a hurricane.  Gustav definitely changed all of that for me!  The winds were pretty incredible.  I'm not sure if they know the sustained wind speeds in the heart of Baton Rouge though I've heard that there were sustained winds were at about 80 mph out at the airport, probably ten miles or so from our house.  I have no way of knowing how fast winds are, but there were times when we were sure there was a tornado close just because of how the trees were whipping around and swirling.  

Our neighborhood is full of lots of old trees, which is nice most of the time for shade and it makes for a pretty neighborhood.  That beauty is deadly in a storm with strong winds though and there were trees falling right and left on our street and throughout our neighborhood. Plenty of people had trees fall on their houses and we are very fortunate that we are not among their numbers.  We did lose a couple of trees in our yard and plenty of branches from larger trees, but nothing on our house or cars.  At about noon on Monday we lost electricity and wouldn't see it again until this past Saturday.  The first couple of days were bearable, but the heat and boredom got to us and in order to be good parents we had to leave on Thursday to go stay in Slidell for a couple of days.  

We came home Sunday to a house with an AC running and a stove that worked!  Baton Rouge is still not back to normal though, there are many, many neighborhoods without power and they are saying that it will likely be until September 24 until all of Baton Rouge has power again.  Consequently traffic lights are out and that makes for a long commute for those of us used to spending maybe 15 minutes or so in our cars on the way to and from work.  We have much to be thankful for though and all of this truly does put life in perspective and shows me how blessed we are to have all that we do, most especially our wonderful family and friends.  

Caroline handled it all remarkably well and as I said earlier, we really left Baton Rouge for Jeff and me, she was great through it all and found new games to play and was generally the bright spot to our days!  

I'll post some pictures that give you a visual on our week.  

This is the view from the street of our house after the storm.  

Another view of the house.  Pictures don't ever quite do something like this justice, but suffice it to say that there were trees or pieces of trees EVERYWHERE.  

Caroline and Jeff playing in her room while the storm raged on outside.  

We went to a little splash park in Slidell on Friday and Caroline had a blast.  

Our girl playing it cool in Papa's sunglasses and talking on his cell phone at lunch after our splash park outing.  

Our girl's progress

I went to the doctor, or actually I went to 2 doctors yesterday to get an update/progress report on our littlest one. Since I've had a stillbirth, I'm considered "high risk" and while I haven't been seeing the maternal-fetal specialists thus far, my regular doctor felt like this was a good time to start checking in with those doctors to get their expertise. The up side to that is that they do an ultrasound every time you see them. So yesterday, I had my first experience with that and all looks good. They do a little more "detailed" or "high-tech" ultrasound and both the ultrasound tech and the doctor told me that she looks great and she moves around a lot, good signs! She now weighs approximately 1 lb. 7oz. At my regular doctor, he echoed their thoughts and said we are still looking "normal" and like things are progressing as they should. All in all, it was good news all around and I am relieved and thankful for it all.

So, I thought I'd share an updated pictures of our baby girl (sorry Allison, I haven't come up with a new nickname yet, we're working on it :-)). It's a profile shot, her arms are up by her face as usual (and Caroline's hands were always like that too when I was pregnant with her).

Please pray for this family

Update:  The Peabodys lost Joseph the same day I wrote this post.  I know they must be in an unspeakable pain and I continue to lift them up in prayer.  

Click on this link: Pray for Joseph.
I don't know this family personally, but I feel like I do now. I was asked by a friend to pray for their family months ago and I've been keeping up with their story via their blog since. If you have the time, scan back through some old posts to see all they've been through. They have been through quite a year and things are not looking good for them now. As I celebrate the third birthday of my precious girl, I am very mindful of and thankful for the blessing that each day brings. Please keep them in your prayers.

Pictures

Finally!! I'm sorry it has taken me so long to get these pictures on here. The first set is from Caroline's birthday party:


 

Jeff made this shirt for Caroline for the big "3"!

Technical difficulties are preventing me from uploading a video, but I'll try again.

Here are some pics of our early morning test-drive in the Power Wheels:

Ariel's along for the ride.

And here's a video of the drive (yes, I love my child very much to put this video with me in scrub pants, a t-shirt, and flip-flops at 6:45 on a Sunday morning):

Again, technical difficulties! I'll try again tonight.

Here are the pictures from one of our outings to the balloon championships:

This is Caroline and Jeff watching the skydivers fly down.

. . . waiting for the skydivers.

It was quite a birthday weekend . . .

Belief

I always enjoy reading Rocks in My Dryer, a blog by a mom in Oklahoma. She can be funny, touching, and inspiring all in one post. I try to catch up on what she writes a couple of times a week and when I checked her blog this morning, this post was up from yesterday and I thought it was so well-said. She has a few really great posts from the past week or so, so if you have time look back.