BISHOP CALL

Yesterday was a big day in Humble Texas. First of the church still doesn't have power so we had church by flashlight. Everyone was told to bring their own light source. The children had fun shinning the flashlights on the chapel ceiling. I wish I could have taken a picture of it all. I held the flashlight so that Stacy Mouton could see the piano music she was playing. I think we should have sang the hymn "The Lord is my Light" or something. It was a little hot, but not to bad.

The other big news in the Humble Ward is that Bishop Thorne was released and my dad was made Bishop. I hope that the fact he was sustained in the dark does not mean he will be Bishop through "dark- times." He is a great man and will be a good Bishop. I'm proud to say he is my dad. Plus because he is my dad he already has lots of patience. The Thorns are moving to Alpine Utah after living here for 25 years. Humble will really miss them!

I was looking for a picture of just my dad, but I don't have one. I'll have to fix that soon. So here are a few favorits of mine. It is nice to live so close to home an be able to stop by any time. I spent a lot of time after the hurricane over at my parents house.

Love You DAD!!!!

Electricity

The most amazing thing happened tonight at 7:30. WE GOT ELECTRICITY!!!! It has been 8 days since the power went out It was so nice to walk into my room flipped the light switch and the light came on. OH HOW NICE!!!

So here is a list of things to do now that we are out of the dark ages:

1. Make toast

2.Enjoy my fan (yeah)

3. vacuum

4.Flip the light switches on and off and watch in amazement

5. print my papers

6. sit in air conditioning

7. Use my oven

8. Drink a class of cold milk

9. pop popcorn (use my microwave)

10. Take a warm Shower

The things you miss while you have now power. The nicest thing of all of this was pulling up into the drive way, opening the car door and not hearing a generator. They are nice to have, but they are so extremely loud.

Hurricane Fun

Well since we don't get to go back to work until Wednesday I'm running out of things to do. So I'm leaving this up to you to complete: Send me ideas make them good, funny, or at least entertaining.

10. Clean up your house all except for vaccuming
9. Watch all the reporters on TV (got to love generators) try and come up with something new to say about the storm. One reporter was so kind to point out that the picture of green grass that we were looking at was actually grass. Go Figure!
8. Continue to flip on all the light switches- just in case
7. Study, study, study
6. Take a dell computer box full of extra boxes down to the recycle place and have your roommate carry you back in the wheelbarrell.
5. Go for lots of bike rides
4. Pray the humidity doesn't come back- its getting more humid- YUCK!
3.
2.
1.

More Hurricane

So some of my favorite signs I've seen lately say: We hate Ike, YMCA closed; Ouch Ike hurt (the place had their roof cave in); Just like Tina we are recovering from Ike. Here are a few more pictures from our area. This is nothing compared to Galeveston. For those of you that are familiar with the the area, Crystal beach is no longer there as of the moment.

Playing cards play flashlight

Poor baby squirrel didn't make it through the hurricane
Cleaning up after the storm.
My Dad isn't he great!!!
Fingers Furniture Sign. Good thing the store is closing. The storm took down the sign for them.

Deerbrook Mall right in front of Sears, Macy was severly water damaged. The store will be closed up to four months as they real build.

Lots of Billboard signs were wripped to shreds.

You can barely see the rainbow in the background. This is on the bridge into Kingwood.

Lake Houston coming from Kingwood into Humble.

Pretty shot of the moon. I'm telling you going around and taking pictures takes up a lot of our time since we don't have electricity.

Top ten things to do with out electricty

10. Drive around in a parking garage honking your car horn on each level (some teenagers)
9. Handwrite all your papers for graduate school by hand. :)
8. Clean up after the storm

7. Sit out side and enjoy cool weather (beleive it or not this did happen in Houston)

6. Play cards by flash light
5. Update your blog using your parents Generator
4. Stroll the streets of town taking pictures of all the damage
3. See how fast you can get in and out of your freezer without letting to much cold air out.
2. Catch up on all your scrapbooking you haven't done in years
1. Turn a light switch on in each room you come to thinking (wishing) the power is on. Then laugh at yourself because you know the power is out.

We helped clean our neighbors yard up since they are 1st responders. We found a baby squirrel that didn't make it through the storm. So Sad!

Sunday we hooked the generator up to the microwave and popped popcorn and played card games. It was fun. Then watched Music and The Spoken Word on the satelite. We are really roughing it down here. Actually I must say I give thanks everyday that it was not worse and pray for those that lost everything. We may be without power, but a cool front has come through and we can sleep with our windows open and enjoy a cool breeze at night.

I may not agree with all of the political sides that Houston Mayer Bill White takes, but he has done an amazing job of leading the city through this disaster and how prepared he is.

Aftermath

Well this is the aftermath of what happened in our area. It was a long night with lots of wind and no air conditioning, but we survived. Here is my parents house. They lost the fence in the back yard and tree branches in the front, the chimney leaked, but other then that we are good. Now we have the generator on so we can get on the internet and watch the news. Our sattelite still works through the generator.

Don't worry Unlce Art the gate to your house is still there, for free access.

This is a new bank that just opened. They lost all of the tiles from the roof.
The 24 hours fitness sign I can't believe is still standing. I'm sure it will come down soon just out of safety concerns.
I thought this was a cool tree. It is amazing what can happen when you have winds come from several different directions.
Mulligans on 1960 lost most of their roof. It is a favorite sports bar among teachers. Not any more.

As were were driving around the Atascocita north we saw a trampoline lying in the middle of the street. It had to of been flipped over someones fence because all of the fences around it were still standing. The legs to the trampoline were further down the street.

This is laying across Upper lake heading west.

A tree and fence across the street from Maplebrook Elementary

This is at the Bishops house of the Humble ward. We stopped by so my dad could report on all the families he was in charge of. Sister Thorn came to the door singing "Master the Tempest is Raging" That made us laugh real hard.

Tree across Timber Forest

Another house on Upper Lake Dr. near our house. I'll show more pictures of galveston once we get electricty restored at our house.

Hurricane Ike

For me the worst part of a Hurricane are the hours and hours you wait for it to come. School was cancelled on Friday which made it nice to have time to write papers for School, few chapters read in the text book and of course clean house, not to mention writing lesson plans. The rest of the time most people are glued to the TV soaking in all the pictures and watching as the storm inches closer. When you get bored of doing all that you tour the neighborhood to look at what other people have done to prepare.

Take a HIKE IKE! This house is around the corner from my parents. Someone usually has some funny sign up that provides entainment on a day like today.

You can't see the sign on this house but it says protected by God and guns.

Another house not to far from my parents. I like those coverings.

They've got the right idea, only board up half the windows.

This is a picture from the Sea Wall in Galveston. The storm hasn't even hit yet and still has a couple of hours to get here and there is already major flooding from the storm surge and people needing to be rescued. I never understood those that stayed when they are under manditory evacuation. At that point whether you're in your house or not you are in danger.

I thought this shot was AWESOME! The sea wall in Galveston is 16 feet high and the waves are already crashing over it. There have been lots of good video taken of the waves crashing. It is kind of cool to see, but I'm gratefull I'm watching a TV and not on Sea Wall Boulvard.

And just in case you didn't know what you were swimming in while at Galveston beach here you go. Don't worry after Hurricane Ike we should have pretty clean water since everything has officially washed ashore. : )

This is a restrauant that sits out in the gulf. Its pier is now gone, probably all the depri in the earlier picture. I'll be interested to see if the restrauant/shop is still standing after the hurricane.

Charlie Bit Me

I was talking to a friend the other night about a previous post I had done for Lisa which said the last time I had cried was last Wednesday (who knows why) He asked me two questions. 1. How often to do I cry 2. How often do women in general cry. I was given the option to not answer the first one. I explained though that when I get frustrated about something (usually something I can't change) and I talk about it I almost always have tears that come along when I talk. So I said probably once or twice a month. Not that they are huge crying fits, just counting when tears drop. After I hung up I thought back a little bit and thought it was a bit high. So since I am in school studying behavior I decided to take data on how often I cry. Then I was going to report back to him. Well I didn't even make it a day.

Thursday I got called down to the office because a student was having a REALLY hard day. No one could calm him down. I'm not even sure what started the whole thing. The principal was just hoping that with my background I would know what to do. When I walked in he was screaming and kicking and trying to bit himself. Some how in calming him down and trying not to let him injure himself my hand got in the way. It looks a lot better in the pictures then it did right after it happened. Around the bit actually swelled up about an inch or more and was almost completely black. I just didn't have a camera. I sat in the office with him for two hours waiting for his grandma to come. Then I rushed back to my room which was really crazy since I had been gone. One of our administrators came back to help. Bless her heart! I have the toughest group of kids I have ever had. One scratches, pinches, another throws chairs, all of them scream most of the day. Although it is getting much better and they are all doing wonderful considering they have never been in school. Even my one student that was so horrible during summer school, they hired and extra para for our classroom. Ok back to the story.

After school I had to go down to insurance and fill out all the paper work (which is why I hate reporting things) They sent me to Nova health clinic to get a shot. YUCK! I HATE NEEDLES!!! This is where it all went down hill. Instead of just giving me a tetnis (sp?) shot (which is what i went for and never actually got) they poked me 7 times trying to take blood so that I can be tested for Hepatitis and HIV. YEAH! I have very small veins which make taking blood painful. I told them how other doctors have taken, blood, but they didn't want to listen. After five pokes and three different doctors trying I finally had to run my hand under hot water for 10min. Then the doctor came in and pulled the skin on my hand tight so that the nurse would have a better shot at the vein. When they did finally get the blood and they were cleaning up the nurse turned to me and said "when you come next week, tell who ever does the blood work our trick and that they have to stick the needle all the way in." WHAT???? Yep that's right only the tip of the needle had one in the vein the other 6 times. I was mad! And to think I get to do this at least 3 more times.

I had to run out of the clinic to make it to a workshop I was suppose to be attending. On the way there, the traffic came to a dead hault because of a serious accident. I called my friend Allison to tell her how dumb this whole thing was and yep I started to cry. Which immediately turned into laughter when I realized I hadn't even made it a day. I had made it through all of that with out crying, but talking about it, gets me. Don't understand.

The whole right side of my had is blue from bruising. Actually I had to wrap my hand up really good on Friday at work because one of my students kept poking their finger nail into the bite mark. Which added to all my bruising I'm sure.

Singing

A few months ago we were asked to sing in Church. We found this beautiful arrangement of "Joseph Smith's First Prayer". We had fun dressing all in the same colors, brown, green and white. Though a few from the group have gotten married and moved out of the ward, for the most part we are the original group. This last Sunday we sang a song called "Those who came before us" The theme of sacrament meeting was temples. The song was very pretty arrangement. Here's a picture of our group.

From Left to right starting on the back row: Kim, Susannah, Alona,Heather, Lesley,Shelley.

Front row: Stephanie(pianist) Leah, Jennifer

Of course we all had to match again(red, white, black, gray) Most of us match more in our accessories, still it was fun.What is a fun group with out some fun pictures as well. It is mostly the Relief Society Presidency/former presidency and roommates. These girls have some amazing voices. We are already planning what song we want to sing next. Any suggestions? While we're at it how about suggestions on a name for this group?

Saturday Night

On Saturday I went to Ikea with Kim and Lisa. Such a store can be dangerous for us, but we actually did great at staying to what we came for and not for what looked enticing to us. On the way home I notice my odometer. I love to watch for pattens on the odometer, but always seem to look right before they happen or right after. So Kim and I drove around for a little while so we could catch all the numbers in descending order. I'm telling miles go much fast driving down the freeway then they do driving around the neighborhood.

While driving around an older neighborhood off of 1960 and 45 we saw the most misfit house I've ever seen. Most of the houses in this area look really old. You could tell they had been weathered down. It was a beautiful area though with lots of trees. It was a beautiful drive. THen all of a sudden we saw the biggest house. Notice the walkway from the second floor main house over to the garage apartment/house. It looks like a house that should be in a gated community not in a run down neighborhood.