Lila and San Antonio

The day before Ike trashed everything.


This is the house we stayed in in San Antonio. As you can see, we weren't suffering!


We put Lila's little dog "Puppy" on Manolo's leash and she was walking him around the house.


She wanted to go walk Puppy outside.


The Alamo. Pictures aren't allowed anywhere inside, so I could only take them of the grounds.


Lila and Nana


This oak tree was huge, and that's an old water well in front of it.


Across from The Alamo is The San Antonio River Walk. We walked down to get a bite to eat.

Lila was SO enamored by the flags that were blowing outside at The Alamo. I got a video of her jabbering away and doing some kind of flag dance.

Storm damage

Here are a couple photos I took of the some of the storm damage in our neighborhood. It looked at lot worse when I was walking around, but we really didn't have it bad compared to some places.

A lot of people, my mom and Kent included, still don't have power and they are saying many people won't get power back until the end of next week. There was some extensive damage to some of the powerlines and there were quite a few power lines down in the roads, even up here where we live. We are actually lucky to have power at our house as the power company says that our zip code won't have power restored until sometime AFTER next Thr. Most of the houses in the neighborhood directly behind our house still don't have power.

I have some misc. photos of Lila and or stay in San Antonio. I'll put those in another post so as not to make this one too long.


Our holly tree; we were able to save it though



Our neigbors on the corner lost a big tree







Notice the sidewalk

Going out of our neighborhood this whole section of brick fence is gone

We're in San Antonio

Well, we survived hurricane Ike! Our neighborhood was a big mess, lots of trees down, a couple of them hit houses, but all in all we did okay. I took a bunch of photos of our area, but forgot to bring the cord to hook the camera up to download them onto the computer. Many of the areas southeast of us were not so lucky. I'm sure you all have seen pictures online or on the news. A big Chase building downtown lost half of it's windows so they're saying there's paper and computer equipment all over downtown. They estimated abut 40% of the residence in Galveston (the city on the coast where the hurricane hit) decided not to evacuate, which is VERY scary! And most of the areas of Houston and the surrounding are without power.

The power went out early in the a.m. Saturday morning and is still out. It was already so hot in our house without AC that we decided to leave yesterday afternoon. The utililty company is saying it may take upwards of two weeks to get all the power back on. My step-dad's brother and his wife recently bought a big house in San Antonio, which is about 2.5 hours from Houston, and they offered to let us all come and stay. Even doggie Manolo! So we figured rather than suffer in the heat, eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches and canned tuna, it would be better to take the drive and stay here where there's AC and internet!

As we were driving west out of Houston we passed convoy after convoy of vehicles going into Houston to help. There were tons of military vehicles, semis with food and supplies, and other vehicles with generators and equipment to help return the power. We also passed at least 50 empty tour-style buses. I imagine they were going to take people who lost their homes or who wouldn't get power back, to other cities. We had to throw away everything that was in our refrigerator and freezer so it wouldn't rot, and so will everyone else who is still without power.

Once we get our power back and we get back home I'll upload the photos I took. Until then Roman's going to try to do some work and Lila and I will relax. San Antonio has a lot of great things to do as well so hopefully we can have some fun while we are here. Here's a link to some photos from the Houston Chronicle. Thanks to all of you who were thinking about and praying for all of us here!

http://www.chron.com/news/photogallery/Ike_blasts_Houston_Galveston.html

First day of "school"

Lila had her first day of Mother's Day Out yesterday. She was fine in the classroom until I left. As soon as I walked out the door I heard her start crying, "MOMMA, MOMMA, MOMMA!". She'd never done that before. When we leave her at church she's just sort of protest cries, so the "Momma" part was hard for me. I stayed out in the hall a minute and then I peaked through the little "parents" window they have, and I think she saw me. After a minute she stopped though, so I left.

When I came to pick her up in the afternoon she was sitting on the floor by the teacher and she just looked up and smiled and said "Momma". Some of the kids were still napping, but of course, Lila had only slept 30 minutes and woke up crying. This woke up some of the others, and the teacher said she wouldn't go back to sleep. Not shocking since she almost never takes a nap longer than 45 minutes.

The teacher said overall Lila had a rough day. She was only happy when they were eating or outside playing. She cried on and off the rest of the day. Mrs. Diane (the teacher) said if she kind of ignored Lila she'd stop crying and play some, but then she'd cry again and start saying "Momma", which then upset the other kids. My baby is an unknowing troublemaker!

Hopefully next week will be better. My moms' group starts meeting again on the 15th as well, so we're going to have quite a few things to adjust to. Two of her friends will be in the same room as her for the moms' group though, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will distract her. Although at this age, she could probably care less. Here are the recent photos...




Her first day outfit. The school says to dress them in play clothes since they do some painting things and go outside for recess. We actually had to go shopping for play clothes since someone (who shall remain nameless, but isn't me) is a baby clothes snob and doesn't allow us to have anything that isn't nice in Lila's closet!



Happy as a clam!


Her new, school shoes.





She LOVES shoes, and is always in the closet, pulling mine out and trying them on.


She's finally wearing some of the 18 month clothes we have for her. Auntie Michelle got Lila some cute hair clips with polka dots and they match this dress perfectly. She looked so cute!


This is what happens if you say "hair". She immediately touches her's. I've made this mistake during dinner time and it was NOT pretty.



Telling me "more"