Alyssa turns 10!!

Alyssa and I had so much fun taking her pictures. She is so sweet and quick to smile. She loves life and you can see it in her smile. I am so blessed to have wonderful daughers with such unique personalities. They all have different gifts and I love to watch them in action.

Alyssa loves to have fun with friends. She has always loved art and dogs!! She is cheering for the first time this fall and has had a great time. We cheer for the school football team, which includes lots of cheers, a half time routine and cheer competition at the end of the season. She is really working on her back-walk-overs ending in the splits!

Alyssa is still loving martial arts and now has her blue belt. She is also working on her sword pattern. We are hoping it will be a good skill for dating someday!

What a precious girl. We love you Alyssa!

<

Hurricane Ike

This is definitely one of those things you will remember for the rest of your life. Its hard to describe the winds that blew for hours and hours. We put the kids to bed on a big pallet it our closet, they thought it was so much fun.... they slept through it all! I couldn't sleep! I stayed up all night. We didn't loose power till about 6 that morning, so I was able to watch it on TV, after that we listened to it all on the radio. We are very fortunate to live in an area that doesn't flood and does not have very many large trees. The older part of our neighborhood is were I took most of these pictures and they had a lot more damage. Lots of trees and fences were down and roofs had lots of damage.

On Sunday we had church "un-plugged" and I drove by Wal-mart to get this photo. People we lined up to get in!! Gas stations were just as bad!!
This is a picture of one of the neighborhood pools we swim in during the summer. Two trees fell into the fence and into the pool.
Sunday afternoon we still didn't have power, so we went over to a friends house to watch a little football and sit in the air conditioning!! The kids had a lot of fun playing with friends. They have been out of school all week and are hoping to go back on Tuesday. Many of the school are damaged and still without power.Everyone brought over their meat to grill before it goes bad!! From Friday through Sunday we ate like kings....steak, pork chops, chicken and more!!
Thank you for the email and phone calls from all of you, we are so blessed to have great friends to look out for us. Continue to pray for all those still in need of so much!

<