Londons new trick

So this is going to be short and sweet. I am sure that London is not going to like this post when she is older... but I am going to post it anyways.

She went poop and pee on the potty today!!!!!!!!

Lincolns first football game

So Lincoln wanted to try football when we got to Texas, so we signed him up for a fun little flag football leauge. Today was his first game.

 This is Hunter Mason (a friend from Calgary ) and Lincoln after their game. The worked really hard and had lots of fun.

 Lincoln insisted on keeping his mouth piece in his mouth for this picture.

Since football seems to be the ting to day here in Texas we are taking the kids tonight to their first ever high schoo football game. We will see how it goes. :)

What a day

Yesterday was a very "special day".. in a very nonspecial sort of way. It started early (as usual) with getting the kids up and ready for school. At 738am our day completely changed. The lights went out..... I thought it was a normal outage like others that we have been through and the lights would come right back on in a few minutes...not!!!!! I quickly hurried the kids to finish their breakfast and shoved them out the door to the car (we usually ride bikes but they were in the garage... now I know what you are thinking, just pull the latch and open the gargare manually...well I did that once and couldn't get the garage door back down and had to wait until Ben got home from work that night to close it.... and since Ben is in South Africa and would not be coming home until Monday I figured that I wold play it safe). So we hopped into the car and arrived at the school promptly at 8am and off Harrison, London and I went back home to hopfully find our lights on..... No such luck. Long story short the energy company turned our lights off by mistake (when we registered for our power they imputed the wrong address and so they turned the power off here because up until yesterday the home builders were paying our bill :) So I spent 9 hours going back and forth between the service company and the service provider to try and despirately get our power turned back on yesterday. Apparently begging is not as affective as I thought because I was informed that it could take up to 48 hours for it to be turned on despite tears and children loudly begging and crying in the background also. Trying to be a good mom and make this experience fun, I allowed the kids to all sleep in the same room and have a "camp out" (Im not sure it was my best idea, but I was pulling at strawes by this time). I had previously ran to Target to grab some extra flashlights in preparation of a dark and quiet night yesterday, so each child now has their own headlamp. By 11pm the fighting, complaining of someone bugging them and being too loud and complaints of being too hot (remember we are in Texas where it is still summer weather and no AC). I myself was laying in bed pleading very quietly that a miracle would occur and our power would be on when we woke up. Once again.... no such luck. Poor Bailee went to school looking a little homeless with her bangs laying every which way on her head, and Jackson had extremely wrinkled pants, but we all got up, out of the house and to school on time. And might I mention, when me and the 2 rug rats arrived back home... we had power!!!!!!!!
Long story I knowm but one worth documenting. I must also say that we have been blessed with having some awesome people in our ward. We had dinner at a girls in the wards house, the kids played with their kids and her husband worked for quite some time to try to get their generator working and they were willing to let us use it to keep the fridge and freezer running. Unfortunatly he could not get it working, but I do have to say that my prayers were answered in those regards because our food was still cold in the fridge and frozen in the freezer after 25 hours with no power.

This is a video of the weather that we have been experiencing here. CRAZY rains.

 

I just had to add this video in because I thought that it was so darn cute. She has a mind of her own.

Ben's new job

So, I don't really know what Ben does for work (I am asked that  lot and really couldn't honestly tell them), I know that it has something to do with oil and gas and consultaning, but how they all go together, I don't really know. Ben's job with Worley Parsons is the reason that we have landed here in Texas. He was transfered here and placed in a global position. I think that his title is something like "Director over US and Global Operations"... so we knew that there would be travel involved. He is over all of the US, South America and Trinidad. RIght now he is in South Africa at a leadership meeting of some sort (for those of you who know Allan McDonald, he is there also). Apparently South Sfrica was the half way point for everyone attnding the seminars (it makes me wonder where everyone else is from). Anyways Ben has been tellign us how cool it is there and how beautiful it is. Here is an email that I recieved from him today... (He assures me that he really is there working  :)

Dear Mom and Kids,

Hope that you are all having a good day today. I really miss you so much. I thought I would tell you a little about my day. I got to go for a run tonight, it was amazing. I ran by giraffes that were eating the leaves in the trees. We then ran by a herd of gazelles and chased them for awhile. After that, we ran by the pond with the hippos in it, they yawned as we went by. As we were running by the hippos, a crocodile scooted off into the water, apparently we scared him when we were running by. It was awesome. Then at dinner tonight, the manager of the hotel told us to come with her and be very quiet. We tiptoed along and were really quiet, then right in front of us, not too far away, were the hippos again. They were out of the water. They get out of the water at night to eat the grass on the golf course. They were HUGE!! It was awesome. They manager warned us to be careful and not make any sudden movements, or the hippos might charge us, which would have been pretty scary. Then all of a sudden, the hippos took off running. We all began to back up slowly, as we didn't want to get run over by the hippos. They were actually chasing each other, and weren't running towards us. It was really cool.

For some reason, I cannot send you the pictures I took of a giraffe and the monkeys that were on the golf course today. I'm very sorry. I will make sure that I send lots of pictures tomorrow, as tomorrow, we are going to Kruger National Park. You should look this up on the internet to see where Daddy is going tomorrow. I will probably get to see Lions, Rhinos, Giraffes, Zebras, Water Buffaloes, Crocodiles, Hyenas, Leopards, and Elephants. I promise to send you these pictures tomorrow, if you are good for Mommy.

I love you all and miss you so much. Please be so good for your Mom, and I will also make sure I buy you guys smoething from Africa. If you're bad, Mom will tell me and then I can't get you anything. Remember This!!

Love You,

Ben

Garbage day

So I know that these are not the best pictures ever taken (I was trying not to look to suspicious), but here in Katy garbage day occurs twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. Recyling day occurs every Tuesday. The garbage men here take EVERYTHING. If you were to put a TV out on the curb they would take it (that is if a local Mexican did not get to it first). So we have been off loading as much as we can for the last 2 garbage days, since we have no vehicle to facilitate a trip to the dump. There have been a couple of new people move in on our street the same time that we did, so everyone had large piles of garbage. Tonight I noticed that there was a slight difference in our amount as compared to our neighbours. Like I said the pictures are not great, but I think that my point is made.....we have a lots of garbage.

 

This is our next door neighbours and they neighbours garbage.

This is our garbage.



And life continues

I thought that it would be hard to make new friends and meet new people here....but honestly it has been super easy. Everyone here is super friendly and so willing to say hi (good old southern hospitality). We have become friends with a couple of families in the ward and sonce we had just moved into the house last week for Jacksons birthday, we decided that we could shove some boxes aside and have some friends over tonight to celebrate Jackson turning 5!!!!!!!!! So with 13 kids (9 boys and 4 girls)..... Jackson got to celebrate his birthday a week late but as Jackson said tonight (that was the best birthday ever)

London has had a vey sore bottom the last little bit so I decided to try and give her some relief in a baking soda bath. Now London is extremely nevous in the bath. She does not like it one bit. She spends the entire bath shaking and screaming out of fear, so I had to come up with a creative way to get her bottom end wet without her having to actually be in the bath tub..... This is what I came up with.... As you can tell....she loved it (maybe I should start bathing her in a bowl).