Field trip to the farm!

Today was a big day, it was Luke's first official field trip! We went with our MOPS group to Dewberry Farms and we had a blast! It was a beautiful day, and Luke enjoyed riding on tractors, petting animals, climbing on the hay and picking out a pumpkin. I had been looking forward to this all year because Luke was too young to go last year. Grandma Jan joined us well, she even was asking our social coordinator is she was planning any other field trips that she could join us again on! Luke's favorite was definitely trying to feed and touch the goats and the baby chicks. We had to be careful with the goat food because Luke of course wanted to eat that himself :-) Here are some pictures.

Luke loved riding the tractor, he is such a big boy!

Luke trying to pet the goats....poor goats, they didn't want to be pet, they wanted to be fed!!

Luke reaching in for the baby chicks, this was my favorite :-)

Luke and mommy on the hay stack

Luke and mommy sliding down the slide....not comfortable, mommy only did that once!

Luke and grandma on the hay ride out through the pumpkin patch, he was getting sleepy :-)

Luke loves books!

For those of you that spend any time around Luke at all, you know that he loves books. Luke likes playing with toys, but he can spend a long time just sitting and "reading" his books. He has a container that has his favorite books, and as soon as I put it back on the shelf, he cries for me to get it down. This was just so cute today that I had to take a picture. He apparently removed enough books to have room to crawl in and sit down to do his reading :-)

Luke and I have spent the last couple of days with Vic's parents while Vic is out of town for work. We had lots of fun with Nana and PawPaw, Luke showed off his improving walking skills. It is amazing how just in the past few days Luke has gone from occasionally taking a couple steps to walking all the time now. Last night he was walking so fast, it almost looked like he was running! Whoa, I am not ready for this! Here are some pictures :-)

Slumber party

There are definitely some good things that came out of Hurricane Ike, mostly that we have had lots of fun seeing friends and family this week. We have been very popular since we got our power back :-) We had Vic's parents here for two nights, and my parents and some of other friends have visited during the day. And then Jessica and Sterling came and spent 3 days with us because they still don't have power. Jessica and I haven't had a slumber party since we used to visit each other in college, and this was even more fun since our boys are the same age. This was one of the first times Luke and Sterling were more interested in each other and actually played together. It is so fascinating to see how different they are even at such a young age. We did notice a few recurring things....Luke does not like to share his food, and when he is finished with his, he kept trying to eat Sterling's. Oh, I forsee calls from teachers in the future telling me that Luke is stealing other kid's food at lunch time!! We had lots of fun though, we took the boys to the park, on walks and to the mall. While we hope it does not take another hurricane before we do this again, it was great to spend time with them. You are never too old for a slumber party!

Bath time!

Sharing toys with each other :-)

Doing their own thing.....Luke loves books and Sterling loves balls

I am not sure what they were saying, but they were talking about something together :-)

Hurricane Ike :-(

Well we survived Hurricane Ike and are even among the fortunate few that have power restored in Houston. Neither of our families nor most of our friends have power, so we have had lots of people over here, we are happy to be able to provide air conditioning and a fridge!!

For the record, I will NEVER again shelter in place or "hunker down" as they call it here if a hurricane of any strength is coming neay my home. Luke did fine of course during the storm, we all stayed downstairs during the storm and Luke hardly even woke up. It was very scary and Vic and I spent most of the evening huddled in the bathroom while winds and rain that sounded like they were going to tear our house apart ripped by. I just kept waiting for the sound of broken glass, but fortunately we never heard that! We suffered little damage, which we are tremedously thankful for. We lost most of our fence and had some minor tree damage, and we had water in our sunroom, but our house is fine other than that.

As awful as the storm was, things are absolutely crazy now. I just went to run an errand and if you can find a gas station open, there are lines as far as you can see of cars waiting for gas. Some grocery store are open, but many don't have anything cold and there are lines to get in those. I am going to try to venture out today to get some more food to feed people that come over!

To all my friends in Houston that I can't get a hold of, I hope you are ok and that we can get in touch soon!! Here are a few picture of our house.

This was Austen and Vic boarding up both of our houses. We felt a little wimpy putting boards up, but wow, we were glad to have those when the storm came. The wind ripped a board off our kitchen window and was beating against it, but by some miracle is stayed on the ground and never went anywhere.

We had a few pieces of fence still standing :-) Oh well, this is an old fence that needs replacing anyways!

We had a section of our tree dangling that needed to be cut down. Vic cut this section down, and then fortunately a neighbor came by with a chainsaw and helped cut it apart.

Lastly, I just want to say how thankful we are for God's protection during the storm. On the day the storm came, I was doing my bible study and it was no coincidence that it was on God being our refuge and shelter and this was one of the verses, which came in handy when we were riding out the storm "....I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed." Psalm 57:1

A few more steps....

Luke took a few more steps this weekend, but still never more than one at a time. So of course I have not gotten a picture :-( We had a fun and relaxing weekend though. I hosted a baby shower for my friend Kristy, and other than that we watched a lot of football, it was wonderful! And on saturday, Luke turned 14 months, so hard to believe!

Kristy and our friends that helped host her shower

On sunday, I did one of my favorite things, dress Vic and Luke in matching (or close to matching) outfits! I am not sure that either one of them enjoy this as much as I do. But I figure I will take advantage of this while Luke is too young to protest what he wears :-)

First Step!

Well Luke took his first official step last night! He only took one step, but he did it twice. Today, he of course, is refusing to take any more steps. This is how Luke has usually done things....he shows us once that he can do something (as if to say, "Get off my back mommy, I can do it!") and then he doesn't do it again for a long time. So we'll see, it might be 6 more months before he is running around. We didn't get a picture, but if he starts taking more steps, we'll try to get one :-)