"Peek-A-Boo, I See You!!"

We have extra boxes from packing the upstairs, Jalyn wanted to play in one yesterday morning.

"Do you see me?"

He had so much fun pretending to be a pirate. He's using his "telescope" to watch his morning cartoons.

Taekwondo Happenings

Jon Michael's instructor at Taekwondo said that I needed more pictures of the boys doing tkd. I had originally planned a new post for this weekend b/c there was supposed to be belt testing but it got put off b/c of the storm.

These are pretty cute though and will hold us over till the testing.

This is what the boys were doing this morning right after they got up...we needed The Karate Kid soundtrack playing in the background!

These are all from Saturdays class, Jalyn standing and repeating with the class, so cute! They learned a lot of self-defense, which Jon Michael loves.

"Darn Damage!"

The water restoration company came back today and said there was still spots that weren't drying so they were gonna rip out more sheetrock.

Here's a few pictures of what they had to rip out. There's more damage but a lot of its surface stuff that can be refinished, like painted walls and stained ceilings. They'll be back again tomorrow to see how dry things are....fun times!

My lovely bedroom!

The office.

The entry.

"Icky Ike!"

Ok, so there's so many pictures I'm not gonna put them in order I'll just describe them! I didn't put many pictures in of the damage b/c its hard to get detail on wet spots in a ceiling and wall, the water restoration people had a fancy camera and took good pictures for us for the adjuster.

For a couple of days after Ike the weather was cool so the boys got to play outside a lot to take up time b/f the daylight was gone.The front room ready to be loaded up in the truck for storage.
Just a few of the ladies who came to the rescue from our church. I had just finished unpacking the office and was in the process of filing papers into the file cabinet....when the water started coming in it all got thrown into the closet so now its all back in boxes to be unpacked and sorted again at a later date!
Snack by candlelight the night after Ike....the camera flash was brighter than the candles!
A shingle that had been lodged into our fence, it was actually tougher to pull out than I thought it would be.
Pool cleanup...Jon Michael didn't get the picture of me after I fell off the steps into the COLD water....notice who's in the water by the way? I don't know if you can tell but the water is overflowing on the side I'm standing in b/c there had been so much rain. Jonathan originally was in shorts to help get into the water but we found a snake and bees or wasps by the waterfall.
Apparently when you're stuck inside for days its so funny to put silly putty into your ears and then scream to see how things sound different!
Tearing up wet carpet...me again doing the dirty work...Jonathan was working and it helped to relieve stress to tear things out!

The boys sleeping through the storm, this was the third place Jalyn had slept that night b/c of the storm and leaks.....they never knew a thing.

An attempt to contain some of the stinky water. This is before the second night of rain and more buckets were added.
Using the last little bit of daylight to color.
Before the pool cleanup was finished, tons of shingles and shingle grit, and other people's leaves and trees branches.
The street signs going into our subdivision.

That's all the pictures for now....we've got tons of pictures of trees on powerlines and trees that fell and busted brick fencing, the trees down at Jon Michaels school, etc.....

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers and offers of help! We are SO lucky compared to others so we really are pleased with how we came out of the storm.

Update on the Boys

Once we walk Jon Michael to school in the mornings the rest of the day basically becomes a free for all for Jalyn. We don't keep a set schedule, at some point during the week we go to the library, grocery shop, pay bills, run errands, "do homeschool", etc....but most days Jalyn gets to decide what he's going to play that day. This particular day he wanted to bring his scooter inside and pretend to race so that's exactly what he did! Notice Samson isn't around....to many close calls.

Oh, in case some of you are picking your jaw up off the ground b/c you saw the words homeschool in relation to me and my kids, don't be fooled its not at all what you're thinking. Jesus has not appeared in person, grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "Carrie, thou shalt homeschool!" (Watch it happen now!!!!!) Its just that Jalyn wants to go to school so badly that he started saying that he was homeschooled. If we read he says his teacher told him which book was best to read, if we're working on our letters and numbers or playing a learning game he raises his hand and calls me teacher.....pretty cute but so sad also! He's gonna drive us crazy this summer as he counts down days until he can go to school. But I'm so glad he's seeing Jon Michael loving school so he wants to go and enjoy it also.



That leads me to the next news, we found out last week that Jon Michael is in the gifted and talented class. Last year you could request to have your child tested to see if they were "gifted", well what parent isn't going to say, YES test my kid, of course they're gifted!!!! ME!! I didn't do it...not because I didn't think he wouldn't do well but because I don't ever want to pressure him in the area of school and take away the fun that he's having right now which is one of the reasons he's learning to love school. Well, his kindergarten teacher "clustered" him into the class when they were assigning kids to classes this year. So without even having to be tested or the pressure of seeing how well he did he got in. We're super proud of him but also trying to keep ourselves in check b/c we don't want him to ever be dissappointed if he's not in it later. Last night was curriculum night and they said that they move much faster than the other classes, they don't have snack (so sad!) like the other classes, they are already doing word problems for math (yuck), and they really do expect excellent behavior along with grades.....YEAH, I think its exactly what Jon Michael needs, he loves reading big kid books and is proud of himself w/o being snotty but he's having a hard time understanding why his other friends aren't learning the things that he is.

This is the fun news for Jon Michael this week, he's finally lost both teeth, the second was absolutely awful getting out and I was right that he was scarred from the first experience...I'm sure the neighbors thought we were killing some kind of wild animal! But he's super excited about how his teeth look right now b/c at recess he gets picked to be one of the vampires.....lovely huh?