Product reviews, parenting articles, and advice for first-time moms from the experiences of real-life mommies.

Our Hurricane Ike Story

Karis 'helping' clean up after Hurricane Ike

I’ve been away from posting for the past few weeks due to a beautiful little storm named Ike.  And by ‘beautiful‘ and ‘little‘, I mean destructive and HUGE.  One might even say ‘Texas-sized’…

During the past few weeks, we’ve been without power (much shorter than most, though!), without water, without internet, and without dairy.  Any one of those things is a daunting challenge in and of itself.  Add all of them together and you’ve got the makings of a really interesting story.  :)

My husband wrote our story of Hurricane Ike beautifully, so I’ll post it here.  But, being a mom and a woman, I had to add one thing to the following story.  After you read Shawn’s post, click here to read my addendum…

We spent all day Friday preparing the house (and yard) for Ike. I took the reflector from my satellite dish down, since it had the biggest potential to be torn off in high winds. We setup a shelter in my garage office, since it is the most secure part of our house. Had an air mattress, the kiddos’ sleeping bags, battery-powered lantern and other goodies in there. Continue reading…

Our First Day of School

Since so many of you who read my blog are my friends, and so many of you are asking how our first day of school went, I thought I’d answer you all here instead of retyping it in 12 different emails.  :)

Ethan's 1st Day of Mother's Day Out

Ethan (my 3yo) did great at Mother’s Day Out at the church around the corner from us – it’s also where Kate went last year and loved it.  He has a huge class of about 12 kiddos his age and 2 teachers.  They said he did great and only got weepy at nap time when they wanted to help him take his shoes off.  He, of course, would have NO one touching his new shoes and got defensive and whiny for mommy at that point.  Too funny what kiddos will get hung up on, huh?  Other than that, he seemed to have had a great day and he said he liked it and had fun.  His favorite?  The kitchen play area.  Hmm.  Do we have a future chef on our hands? Continue reading…

Kate Amaris: Artist Extraordinaire

This is a photo that Kate took on Shawn’s iPhone recently.  She obviously blurred whatever she was looking at, but the resulting image was just too pretty to delete.  What’s amazing to me is that Kate’s a better artist on accident than her mommy ever is on purpose!!  :)

John Mayer Concert!!

Our wonderful friends, Jon and Terri, invited us to join them on the lawn at the John Mayer concert at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands recently. And it was A-W-E-S-O-M-E! It was HOT and it was HOT. And if you look at the picture here and see John in the middle, you’ll know what I’m saying about that second HOT…

Yes.  That’s John Mayer.  With a newly shaved head and NO shirt.  (You can click on the pic to see it a little bigger and get a better look.

Did I mention that he had no shirt on?  

Now, granted it was hot as holy Hades (as it always is in Houston in August) and any shirt he may have attempted to wear would have been soaked through with sweat within 30 seconds on stage, but…  All I know is all the women in the SOLD-OUT crowd were fanning themselves (and not just from the temperature heat) and all the men were wondering when he got so buff.  :)  And while I’m sure some of the ladies were upset that he shaved all his hair off, I kind of like it because, well…  it reminds me of another shaved head on a man that I’m totally in love with – yes, that’s you, honey.  So, for John, the shaved head was definitely a plus in my book!  :)

Looks aside, the concert was absolutely phenomenal.  The quality of musicianship from the ENTIRE band was probably one of the best I’ve ever heard at a live concert.  Even from Sting.  And I REALLY like Sting.

John did several solos that were beyond phenomenal, but the long solo during ‘Mercy’ was so incredibly off-the-hook that everyone who was there will be talking about it for years to come.  Not only did he play a great shredding solo to start with, but then he played behind his head.  And then he held the guitar by it’s neck with one hand and played it.  But the real OMG! moment was when he laid the guitar on the floor of the stage and continued to play it while crouched down over it.  That was it.  I was done.  He could have ended the concert then and there and I would have happily oozed to the car and sat in traffic to get out of the parking lot.  Yes, it was THAT spectacular.

But, thank God that was not the end of the concert, because there was so much more great music to enjoy!  He did a great job of playing to all of his different fans, and when he started playing “Crossroads” by Stevie Ray Vaughan (one of his inspirations to start learning guitar, btw), Shawn and our friend, Jon, were both done for the night, too.  (You see, they’re both big SRV fans, and SRV was really big in Texas, so when John Mayer started playing SRV, they were both really happy, and well, I think you probably got the connection by now…) 

But, one of my favorite things about the night was his interaction with the audience.  Always smooth, always humble (wha, wha, what? A superstar like John Mayer, humble?  Yip.  So awesome.), always witty.  At one point I leaned over to Terri and said, ”I think he reads a lot.  I mean, he keeps using those big college-level words like ‘expository’.”  :)  She said, “Yeah.  My personal favorite was ‘cocooning’.  In fact, I’m going to start using that phrase – ‘I wasn’t being cocky, I was just cocooning myself in positivity.’”  Well, whatever you were doing John, it worked, because we all loved it!

So, I suppose I’ve rambled through all of this enough for you to know that I had a great night.  And this is my way of sharing my joy and also my way of saying THANK YOU to Jon and Terri.  What a perfect evening!  :)

Overheard at Our House II

Ethan was lying on the couch next to me watching tv when Shawn came over to tickle him.  Ethan was giggling uncontrollably when Karis marched over and pushed Shawn’s arm away from Ethan with a very stern look on her face.  Apparently she was trying to ‘protect’ her big brother from the big, mean Daddy.  :)

Shawn saw her look of concern and said, “Oh, baby.  I’m not hurting him, I’m just tickling him.  Besides, he’s Daddy’s boy.” and he ruffled Ethan’s hair.

Karis looked at him, shook her head and said, “Un-uh” (her version of ‘no’.), then pointed at me and said, “Mama.”

Shawn and I looked at each other and started to laugh.  ”You think Ethan is Mama’s boy, not Daddy’s?”

Karis nodded her head firmly and said, “Ya.”