Don't Have To Live Like a Refugee

The Swiss Family Pasta at Pasta South

Is it over? Hopefully this is the last day we spend at Dave's gracious parents. We got a text of a rumor of a rumor of power in our (soon to be old) neighborhood. Barb called our next door neighbor and she had power! Our house is dark, but the main breaker is thrown, so we are probably in luck.

The plan? Barb has been packing all week. We plan to spend tomorrow evening at the Carter's watching the debate with our Willowbend neighbors (who will always be our neighbors at heart) if there is a debate. That night should be the first of two last nights at the Briarbend house.

Saturday Barb's parents come to down to help pack and move. Saturday night we take possession of the Friendswood house and then all eat Polish food at Dave's parents. More packing on Sunday and then the big move on Monday.

Sean gives Barb and Barley Piano lessons

Sean move his chemistry experiments from mixing water with water to mixing water with milk.

A New House!

Today we closed on our new house in Friendswood - just 8 days late due to Ike. We had to close at a Panera Bread as between all the parties involved no one had an open office in Harris County due to Ike and the Notary Public with us was only valid in Harris.

We are now renting the house to the sellers until Saturday and take the keys Saturday afternoon. Utility transfers are an issue - all gas and electric folks are too busy with Ike damage. After a day of trying to set it up we all gave up and now have an agreement to read the meters together Saturday night and then figure it out once the transfer is made.

We are still Ike refugees living at Dave's parents' house. The Briarbend house is projected to have power on Friday now.

Most services are open, but traffic is bad on I-45 south. Around 6:30am service folks rush south to Galveston County and then rush north at 6:30pm or so. It usually takes Dave 45-50 minutes to drive the 45 miles to the Briarbend house. It now takes 45-55 minutes to drive 30 miles to his parents' house. The rest of the freeways are also bad since many traffic lights are out at the exit ramps. The intersections become 4 way stops. We never thought we would be happy to have stoplights, but life without them is much worse, trust us.

Damage from Ike

Guest blogger Joanne here. Me, mom, and dad made it home today. Barb and Sean to follow tomorrow. Dave's house is still without power. I stopped by their house to pick up their cat Barley. Here are a couple photos of their backyard. Extensive tree damage throughout their neighborhood.

Dave unfortunately hurt his knee on Monday. He is thinking it is better than first thought. However, it did prevent him from doing this blog entry.

Ike Update

Our house is fine. Lots of tree damage in back yard. Finally pictures from during the storm. Above, Keri relaxes before power went out.

Dave has spent the last two days at his plant working to assess damage and get things running. Barb and Sean are in Kerrville until Tuesday.

Houston is not "hell." For the most part all Interstates are passable. Gasoline is hard to come by. Grocery stores and hardware stores are coming online using generators. Folks on the coast or bay are in bad shape, the rest of us are fine but without power.

Tiffany sleeping/watching TV

Shivs in door at Carters to keep wind and rain out

Morgan tries to ride the Carter's roomba

Ike Aftermath

Ike moved through Houston last night. Dave spent the night at the Carter's house along with the Johnson family. The wind really picked up at about 7pm. We started to hear transformers blow-up all over the neighborhood. By 11pm many block were dark. By 11:30pm all of the south part of Willowbend was dark. We lost power at 2:30am. The wind was impressive and howling.

Saturday morning we woke up to a good amount of storm damage in the neighborhood. Lots of tree debris and trees down - amazingly none hit houses or cars. Fences were down all over.

Later Saturday Dave went to ISP in TxCity to help assess damage. During the trip there and back there was no power or open stores anywhere. Our new house in Friendswood is fine, although you had to walk through knee deep water to get to it.

Amazingly enough Dave's parent's house had power! That is where Dave is now. Since we have not been together since early Tuesday morning Dave, Barbara and Sean are looking forward to seeing each other hopefully on Monday

Hurricane Ike-Hill Country style

Sean, Barbara, Joanne, Dan, and Margie decided they liked electricity, so they fled to Kerrville. Things were tough here, too, obviously noted by the pictures below.

Between webconferences, Joanne, Barbara, and Margie prepared for the storm not by boarding up windows, but helping the Kerrville economy by getting pedicures.

Joanne followed the fashion rage in Kerrville and had hurricanes painted on her big toes.



Sean got in on the fun and sorted canned goods, just in case.




Those still awake at 1:30 toasted the arrival of the eye wall with hurricanes. Apparently the farther away from New Orleans, the bluer the hurricanes become.

p.s. We're not refugees, we're evacuees!

p.s.s. Good luck to all who stayed. We will see you soon!

Hurricane Ike - House is Ready

We are in the process of "hunkering" down for Ike. It looks like a lot of wind, maybe 80mph in the morning and a lot of rain. The storm surge at Galveston is probably the worst since Carla in 1961.

Barbara, Sean, my Parents and Joanne are all at Barbara's parents' house in Kerrville. Barb and Sean were already in Austin Tuesday -Thursday and decided to stay in the Hill Country.

Todd and I boarded up our houses yesterday, hopefully being over cautious. I am in a pocket of 7 other house that are boarded up. Only about 5% of the houses in the neighborhood are boarded up.

Most of the area retail stores are closed or set to close by 1pm. The Post Office did deliver mail, which was kind of odd. The Houston Chronicle delivered the Sunday supplements and comics today. The Chronicle has also opened up it publishing website so that people that cannot get the paper can see the exact printed page: www.eedition.chron.com Username and Password are Ike.

Bad Pastas

It has been quite a while since we updated. We have been involved in playing real estate moguls and are buying a house in Friendswood and selling our house in Willowbend.

We should be closing on the house in Friendswood on Tuesday. It is nearly twice the size of our current house and on a 15,000 sq. ft. lot. It is in the Quaker's Landing neighborhood - small, quiet, on the banks of Clear Creek and all streets are dead ends. We are looking at moving the week of the 22nd.

We put our house up for sale at 3pm last Friday. We had a lot of showings over the weekend and accepted an offer tonight, with closing on 10/7/08.

This has been a little bit of a stressful time, but we are very happy with where we are. We will miss living in Willowbend close to our friends and neighbors, however Dave is looking forward to 40 miles less of driving a day.

Sean continues to grow in every way. He is very talkative and using sentences all the time: "Daddy, sit down please" when he wants Dave to play with him is one example. He is a lot of fun. More info and pics soon.

Grandpa Boyce's 70th!

On July 26th we celebrate Barbara's Dad's 70th birthday. He had a big shindig in Kerrville, and it was a great chance for the family to get together.

The extended Boyce family

Grandma Pasta and Sean

Dave with Elissa ("Sissa" to Sean) and Sean

Sean and Elissa score peaches in an orchard near Fredricksburg

Grandma Pasta with Sean and Elissa in her motel pool

Sean and Elissa together in the backyard

Quite a turnout for Ted's birthday

Dave, Sean and Elissa have fun playing with ice

Dave breaks out the Slip-N-Slide (and then is in pain for the next 3 days)

Fun weekend

We had a very busy weekend. We started Friday night at the Jen and Dave Hofmans' celebrating Dave's new job. Congrats Dave! Carol and Penny made it from New Mexico, but somehow we forgot to take any pictures.

Saturday was yardwork and exercise.

Now where do I put this thing?

Later we had fun at the Boyces'. Sean, Elissa, and the dads went to the park and swam in the backyard pool while the moms and Darlene went to the outlet mall.

Then we all had a great meal.

Sunday morning Sean and Dave read the paper and then started the day.

We ended up at the Johnsons' celebrating Morgan's first birthday. Look for the Johnsons' big announcement on their blog here.

Sean 18-Month Update

Sean had his 18-month check-up yesterday:

• Weight: 24 lbs. 2 oz. 30%
• Height: 34 inches 90%
• Head: 18.75 inches 45%

Everything checked out fine. He had two shots and was extremely unhappy about it. He was so stressed out he acted funny the rest of the day. He may have been slightly dizzy, too, which was a side effect of one of the shots.

His main developments have been vocabulary, comprehension and memory. He has many two syllable words and phrases: "all done," "night night," up please," "off please," "help please" and one "I don't know." Sometimes he strings things together for emphasis, like "night-night all done" when he really wants to be put in his bed; or "all done bye-bye" when he is really tired of his car seat.

He gets very frustrated when we cannot understand him. When we were in Johnson City this weekend he suddenly started saying "shoe, shoe, NO NO" and trying to take one shoe off. I put it back on and he cried "shoe, shoe, NO NO NO NO." I eventually found that he had stepped on a huge thorn that went through the bottom of his Crocs and poked out about 1/8" out of the sole (and into his foot.) So, in retrospect, what he said made complete sense.

The cutest things are words he can't quite say yet:

• Ice weem = ice cream
• Hopter = helicopter (or, sometimes, a plane)
• Pafier = pacifier
  

He is a complete Elmo fanatic and loves everything Elmo.

He has the location of every fake owl in south Texas memorized and will say "hoot-hoot" or "owl" when brought within 30 feet (even if he can't see the owl.)

His other fixation is buses, like his friend Daniel in Colorado when he was Sean's age. A bus, or anything that looks vaguely like a bus, elicits: "bus bus bus bus bus bus bus," Most times it is a bus that he some how spots (or senses) before we can ever see it. Scary.

Grandma Pasta and I have taken to the bad habit of showing him video of Elmo, owls, buses, hopters, etc. on YouTube. He now associates LCD monitors with Elmo. On the plus side, you find videos like school bus racing!

4th of July

Sean turns 18 months old today!!! Happy birthday today to Dziadziu!!!

Link to photo album HERE

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4th of July weekend started with Barbara's birthday on the 2nd. She co-hosted her own party at our house on the 3rd. We had 11 kids there who all had a great time. Sean did not go to bed until after 10:30pm - a very late night for him.

We loaded up the car and headed for Kerrville on Friday morning and celebrated the 4th there. On Saturday we went to the Sauer-Beckman Farmstead near LBJ Ranch outside of Johnson City. It is an 1869 farm and home now run as a historical site by Texas Parks and Wildlife. Sean loved the farm animals and mooed at the cows and clucked at the chickens and roosters.

Saturday night Beth came over for a great slow-cooked brisket dinner. Both nights Sean played in the hot tub, which he loves.

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Sean helps Daddy build Barbara's birthday present

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Sean watches cows

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Sean facinated by a rooster

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Limestone watering trough that Sean insisted on getting closer to: "pool, up please!"

Start of Summer!

The start of summer has been a busy time. Lots of outside play, almost buying a house in Pearland and lots of weekend trips!

Sean has been a blast. He learns a new word or three every day. He loves his books and likes to climb every thing.

OK, I've got my bib, I am half-way up the highchair - where is my food?

Is this Mama's birthday present or mine? Until Dada gets around to putting them together it is all mine!

Sean's first professional sporting event - the Astros v. the Dodgers. He liked: 1) the Minute Maid Train (Choo Choo!) and 2) the hole in a support girder on the concourse (peek-a-boo!)

First Weekend of Summer

We have been so busy having fun that we have had a hard time updating the blog to show it!

This weekend Dave rode in a bike race Saturday morning and then met Barbara and Sean at the Cook's in Pearland for Casey's 3rd birthday. After that Sean had his 2nd haircut and we had dinner at Grandma and Dziadziu's house.

Sunday we went to the Zoo with Nick, Heather and Elissa. Then, back to our house to play in the frog pool and grill chicken for dinner. Sean and Elissa had a big day.

This was Sean's 1st trip to the zoo in over a year, so it was a very different experience. He loved (in order): fish, owls, monkeys, elephants and then seals.

Dave with Sean and Nick with Elissa

Finally, Sean gets to see real owls. His favorite toy is an owl and he loves to say "hoot hoot!" He knows where to find every owl in his daily routine, including the fake one that guards the roof of the YMCA.

It was hard to pull Sean away from the first small fish exhibit we came across

In the rain forest building Sean barely ever left the first exhibit: fish, of course. We could get him to say "bye bye fish" and then walk off, only to have him turn around and run back to the fish. Elissa is on the right.

Nick and Dave have some quality brother-in-law time in a tube through a fish tank

Sean, who has been afraid of tubes in play structures, goes through one for the first time - to see fish, of course. Dave and Elissa help him through....

Finally: we head off to see the monkeys

Sean and Elissa loved watching the monkeys play

Father's Day

We celebrated Father's Day on Saturday at Grandma and Dziadziu's house with the Jennifer, Dave and Alton Hofman. Joanne, Barb and Grandma cooked a medley of our favorites: meatloaf for Dave.

Grandma gets her baby fix with Alton and Sean

Dave and Sean read together

And the Port Aransas pictures!!!

Click here for the photos from Port A!

Florida pictures--Finally!

Well, we've finally gotten the Florida pictures organized and ready for viewing. Click here to view.

We hope you like them.

Sean the Pool Monkey

After a couple of beach vacations last month, Sean has decided that near the water is a pretty cool place to hang out. Grandma and Joanne gave him a frog pool and we decided to invite the neighbors over to help Sean see the full range of activities available to him. So far, he had only stuck his fingers in the water and played with the spray fountain from outside the pool. Abby and Mackenzie showed him the slide and how fun splashing IN the pool could be. Sean still didn't get all the way in, but he did have a great time spraying the girls.

Swimming makes me hungry! Cupcakes are great energy food. Thanks Mackenzie!Ready for some lap swimming with Mom's goggles.

On Saturday we headed down to the League City YMCA to check out their great kids' pool. Slides, splashing water buckets and lots of kids to watch met him at the pool. He had a great time. Unfortunately, we were having so much fun we forgot to take pictures.

On Sunday we decided to swim again, this time at the Pearland Y by Grandma and Dziadziu's house. Again, we forgot to take pictures. Later that afternoon, after a nap, we joined the Johnsons' at the Carters' pool for another dip.

As the weekend came to a close, Sean and his pruny fingers and toes fell into a deep, restful sleep.