I don't vote for Socialists

Halloween

Rock-a-bye Baby

My video ran out at the last second, but you get the idea. And yes, she is trying to take her shirt off, I guess every kid figures it out at some point.

Blackout 2008

Alright, I know this is late coming, but I've been in a non-blogging mood for quite a while now...(sorry mom). We did survive the hurricane, but it was not without a few hardships. We decided to stay here and ride it out, since all of our ward members and neighbors seemed to think it wasn't that big of a deal. I figured, "Hey, they've lived here a lot longer than me, so they must no better."

Well, that was a good idea and bad one at the same time. We made it through the night, but it was impossible for us to sleep, especially when Isabelle was in our bed so we put her back in her own bed and she slept through the rest of the storm. Jer and I had a harder time sleeping, but still we tried. Our power went out at about 12:00 in the morning and it immediately started to get hot. It sounded like someone had a power washer on our windows and every now and then we could hear branches and things hitting our house. The next morning, we did a quick check on our home and yard. We were very grateful that there was no damage to our house and our yard only had scattered branches and leaves, but nothing substantial. Most of this is due to the fact that our neighborhood is pretty new and we don't have a ton of large trees surrounding us. After the initial assessment and a little clean up of the yard, we decided that we better start eating as much as possible or our fridge was going to go south fast. We ate what we could, but I had just gone to the grocery store a few days earlier and we had things that we just couldn't get rid of in one day. Needless to say, we lost a ton of food and it stunk really bad.

We decided to check out the neighborhood and the surrounding area and then get out of town if our power wasn't back on by Sunday. We started by walking over to the lake that is across the street from our house. It was crazy, there is a sidewalk that circles the lake and it was completely gone. There were huge trees floating in the lake and on the opposite side of it, the water was at the level of some of the driveways. All of our neighborhood was out watching it rise, hoping that it wouldn't flood. Luckily, it was about 15 feet away from our houses when the water stopped. All in all, our neighborhood came out quite well, I can only think of one house that had a tree fall into the garage, so we were all pretty lucky. The neighborhoods surrounding ours were not so lucky. There are a lot of trees in this area and if any of you have ever been to the woodlands or the Houston temple, you'll know what I'm talking about. Most of these homes had trees falling somewhere on their property. We saw a ton of houses with trees right on top of them. Some of the roads were flooding and they were telling people not to leave their homes, even though we did.

The next day, our power was still out and I was still hot!! Jer and I decided that it would be best for us to take off, since they didn't think our power would be on any time soon and his office was still closed. The only road that was open was I 45 north, so we headed up to Dallas to find refuge with Heidi and Nate. They were so nice to let us stay with them, even though I had just been there three weeks earlier. I'm sure they're sick of us by now, but I really do appreciate it. We stayed with them until Tuesday when Jer's office opened back up and when we got home on Tues night, our power was still off. It was really disappointing, but we kept on thinking that it was going to come back on at any time. Well, that was wishful thinking because it was out until the following Sat at 5pm. We had been without power for a full 7 days and let me just say that it was not cool at all. Candle light is not the way to go if you have a blackout, so next time we're going to invest in some sort of battery powered camping lights. I kept us busy by hanging out with friends who were having the same problems during the day, but it was hard to have lights out at 8pm. I think I threw away about 200$ of food, which was a waste and it was hard to see it all go into the garbage. I really hated to throw out things that were brand new, like large packages of Costco chicken. When the power finally came back on, Isabelle and I were jumping up and down and running through the house screaming. Izzy kept saying, "Our TVs working, our TVs working." Sad, but it was really exciting too!! Although it was hard and I'm so glad it's back on, I know people that were without electricity and in some cases water for close to two weeks, so really I'm not complaining that much. It was hard on everyone and it hit us much harder than anyone thought it would. We are very grateful that we and everyone we know are OK! Jer went down to Galveston last Sunday to help with the churches humanitarian aid and he said it was really amazing to see everything out there. The church had 1500 volunteers that day and most everyone was very happy when the Mormons showed up. Apparently the red cross and other Churches are referring people to the Mormons because they are so organized. Galveston if pretty much decimated and most of the homes Jer was helping out with will need to be completely redone. One interesting note is that the church building down there was totally fine.

So, that's our crisis. If anyone would like to donate to the save the Harrison's fund, we are now accepting cash only donations. Just kidding, we'll take all major credit cards and checks as well. Here is a video of our lake, I can't put up the other pics because they are in a word doc, but I'm sure you've seen a lot of it on TV.

Big News!!

Ok, so part of my non-blogging was due to the fact that I've been sick. If you haven't noticed from my new title, we're having another baby. I wasn't deathly ill, just felt like I had the flu all the time, hence the no blogging. At this point, I'm feeling better as far as the flu part goes, but I'm still very tired and for some reason I seem to get a lot of headaches in my second trimester. This kid is pretty much exactly the same as my pregnancy with Isabelle except for the acne of course. So I must say, my daughter pretty much knows every show on TV by heart now and even greets Steve, or Joe with a big HI Steve, or Joe every time her favorite blues clues episode comes on, oh what a proud parent am I. I guess the good news is that I'm back to cooking sort of, (not that I was ever a good cook) so that means re-heated left overs for Jer instead of re-heated burgers at the local fast food joint, lucky duck, I know you're all wishing you could live this good.

Well, here's a sneak peak at our soon to be newborn. I'm 15 weeks along and due on Feb 1st. I cheated a bit and went to Fetal Photo's while in Utah...love that place, so here it is.......drum roll please........baby number two is a BOY!! Jer is very excited and it will be interesting to see how the wild child handles our new addition. I'm guessing she's going to be ticked, but maybe she'll surprise me. Let's hope!! Oh, he still looks like skelator right now, but even so, we're not naming him that.

Long time no blog!!

Sorry, but we've been on blogging vacation for quite some time now. I have to tell you, it's kind of been a nice break. Since we're back from vacation now, I guess I'll catch you up on our lives so far. We spent the past month away from Houston on one big long vacation. First we went to Oregon for Jer's family reunion, then we spend three weeks hanging out in Utah with my family. It was a ton of fun and Isabelle always enjoys the time she gets to spend with her Mommy/Grandma, or that's what she calls her anyway. I don't have a ton of pics, since I'm not very good at taking them and I had to unload a bunch on my parents computer which I forgot to email to myself, but here are a few of Izzy feeding my cousins dog as well as us playing at the zoo. It was a great vacation and we can't wait to see everyone again someday!! Oh, side note...Isabelle turned two while we were gone. Unfortunately, we weren't able to throw her a party in time because I was flying to Utah the day before her B-day, but we did manage to buy a cake, I just forgot to take pictures of it. Sorry for the lame-o Birthday Iz, I'll do better next year.

Coolest Neigbors ever!!!

Izzy was invited to our neighbors birthday party last Saturday and needless to say, they are the coolest!! Since our backyards touch, we got to head on over before everyone else and play on this gigantic water slide by ourselves. Daddy came over and took some video for us, so here you go. Please ignore the nasty mom in her swimsuit. I was having fun, and no one was around, so I

wasn't too worried about looking stupid, even though I do!! The last one is of her zonked out on my bed after two hours of playing, she threw a big fit and then crashed! I must add that this thing was so much fun, I don't think any of the other adults got on it, but they should have, it was great and Izzy thought it was hilarious when I would go down and crash into her. Definitely good play time for us. Can you believe this kid is about to turn two? Honestly, she still looks like a baby, the lack of hair is not helping either!!

FREE CONCERT!!

Tuesday night Jer got free concert tickets to The Police, I much prefer just sting to the Police, but it's free and hey, who doesn't like The Police? Too bad it was way short notice and we didn't have a babysitter, so what do we do, yeah that's right, just take her along. So here we are with our almost two year old hanging out at The Police. We did leave a little early since it was way past bedtime and the walk back to the car was so long, I thought for sure my feet were going to fall off. I really did get blisters from it. It was an outdoor event so it wasn't too weird to see a toddler running around on the grass, but honestly I have never before seen so many people crammed into an amphitheatre. It was like seeing it at the Delta Center, but outside. I know Mers is totally Jealous right now, but even though sting sounded great, his new 80's lumberjack look was kinda throwing me off. As you can see from the video, he's sporting an old man beard/mustache combo with a black T-shirt, no sleeves. I was not impressed, he did however sound great!! Mers, too bad you don't live here, we had four extra tickets that went to waste.

Ahh, the perks of summer interns.

The Artist

OK, so I wasn't fully paying attention to my child today, (so really it's all my fault) but here's what she did to occupy herself.

Lucky for me it was done with a beautiful shade of pee yellow highlighter, so it was quite easy to clean off with a little Windex. Also, thanks to the leather, our chair is back to it's original color of brown. This little girl did quite the job redecorating pretty much my entire living room from every wall to the shutters and even the direct TV box. She even managed to color her potty...inside and out. As I opened her potty to examine the damage on the inside, she let out a long and drawn out "Ah Ohhhh" Almost in a taunting sort of way. I guess that was pay back for being on the computer. Nice one Iz. Later, after just getting this mess cleaned up, I found her sitting on her potty, taking large sips of milk and spitting it onto the floor. I guess today was a time out day!!

I must add that she snatched this highlighter right out of the office while I was on the computer, now that's one sneaky kid or one zoned out parent. From now on all computer time will be spent at night or during naps....lesson learned. Oh and these are only a few of the walls, it was everywhere, including all over her legs and shirt!

Grandma and Grandpa!!

(I think those are the whitest legs in the world)

Here's gangsta hill, we decided that only the coolest people ride in limos and everyone was going to be dissapointed when we got out of it.

Grandpa's gangsta signs, he actually just looks like he has bad arthritis.

We got to spend this past week this Grandpa and Grandma, it was a ton of fun and although we were very sad to see them go, we know that we'll see them again in two months, so it's not so bad! They showed up on Mother's Day and we had a great dinner that night. The next day, Jer and I surprised them by taking everyone on a limo ride and then out to a fancy dinner. It was so much fun and I think they were really surprised. We spent the end of the week hanging out in San Antonio. It's a really pretty city with a lot of culture and history. Although the Alamo was much smaller that I thought it was going to be, it was still really cool to see a 300 year old structure. I also love American history, so I loved it. We also saw the river walk, some IMAX shows, the temple and body worlds. It was really fun to watch Izzy go crazy with all the attention. She is talking more than ever and I swear she talks more when Grandma's around. She was a really good traveler and we only had one freak out, so I'm not so scared to take her places anymore. I even think that she could handle a movie with us. As long as she has popcorn a drink and her blankie, she's good to go. That's a good thing, since all the cool movies are coming out and I don't want to get babysitters, one bad thing about not having family around. Anyway, it was a really fun week, thank you so much Mom and Dad for coming to see us and taking us on vacation!! Can't wait to see you all again in July!!

A Southern Shower

(The Bride, and Jer in the background)



(The Bride and her sisters)



(Cortney's cutie pie, Asher)

I've been really busy lately, but it's been a ton of fun. One of my good friends from NH who is like a little sister to me is getting married this weekend. Since she is getting married down here in Houston, we decided to throw her a shower yesterday. It was a little twist on a Southern Belle theme. Other than the food not being ready on time, it was a really great shower. Instead of mint julip, we had mint lemonade and we also had some of the most amazing desserts. I would have liked to have done more with magnolia's, since they are blooming right now and Houston is known as the Magnolia city, but most of the trees are in other peoples yards, so I didn't want to steal from them...plus, that's just weird. Anyway, thank you so much Bartletts for letting me go crazy with the party, Tessa is going to be a beautiful bride!!

Corpus Christi

Last weekend we went to Corpus Christi. It's only about 4 hours from here, so the drive isn't too bad on little Isabelle. Jer's brother is moving down there, so while they we here looking for a house we hung out with them a bit. We took Izzy to this park that was pretty cool, but she fell down and was too mad to play from then on out. She wouldn't take her sunglasses off the entire time. I put them in the diaper bag and one point and she got them out and put them back on. She even wore them the entire time she was crying. I guess she wanted to look cool even though she wasn't very happy.

Weekend in Dallas

Last weekend we went to Dallas. Jer's firm was having an attorney retreat there and since it's only four hours away, it gave us a good chance to visit with our good friends Heidi and Nate. I also have to thank them for letting us spend the night. It was a lot of fun and our kids had a great time playing together. The firm put everyone up at the Ritz, so Isabelle and I played stow away and joined Jer for one night. It was a really nice place, the first picture is of Izzy eating a grilled cheese on a really nice chair. I felt kind of bad about letting her get greasy food everywhere, but it's still a hotel and they don't have highchairs at the Ritz. We did get to go swimming in a fun pool, but I felt a little out of place with the strobe lights and techno music all the while holding my toddler. Here are a few pics of the kids playing together, they were really cute together and Logan was so cute to include Isabelle and even hold her hand. Heidi has a much better camera than me, so she has all the really good pics, but you get the idea. Thanks again Reeses Pieces for the birthday party and fun weekend. It was good to see you guys. Hopefully next time we'll be able to take advantage of the sweet media room!