TURN AROUND DON'T DROWN

It's official, the continuous rain now has a name to be remembered by: SUMMER FLOOD '07. Most of the dangerous flooding has occured northwest of Austin, but we are all seeing the effects. Lake Travis is 12 feet higher than capacity, Lake Austin is full, full, full and the LCRA dam system is being put to the test. Not to mention all the folks who have been forced to leave their destroyed homes and businesses. And the rain doesn't appear to be letting up anytime soon.


Last night we went out to dinner and it began raining again as we were driving home. When we pulled up the driveway, the doggies were huddled up under the eave by the garage door. It was really cute and kind of funny. They are such good babies.

Another time it flooded in Austin, Renee' was having to drive home from her job when flash flooding began; so I called to check on her and was worried because I'd seen news of dumpsters floating around! That was bad news to me; when dumpsters are floating, you gotta watch out! Now anytime there is flooding, my Dad calls and tells me to watch out for dumpsters.

The one thing about floods is that we are reminded of one of God's promises. After flooding the earth to wipe wickedness from mankind, God made a covenant with Noah.

And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth." Genisis 9:12-16

*note a few of my favorite rainbow pictures*

Here are some photos from our local news station, submitted by folks in the flooding areas.

CUP-A-CAKES!

My friend at work, Stacy, made THE BEST cupcakes last week. And knowing how much I love cupcakes, she brought me TWO! They were seriously the best cupcakes I've ever had. And I've had a lot of cupcakes. The icing was homemade creamcheese icing. mmmmm. Delicious!


This is a picture out my window at work. This is what I was looking at as I ate my cupcakes, so I decided to take a picture. A storm was blowing in and the wind was really strong. I watched a big jetairliner come in and turn for final then crabcrawl towards the airport. There was also a small bunch of balloons being tossed about. There was something kind of neat and odd about seeing the little bunch of red balloons so high up being thrashed around in the wind. I can't describe the vision very well -- Aaron had a chuckle at my awe over a little bunch of balloons in a stormy sky. I wish I'd been quick enough to take a picture of them so I didn't have to describe it.

TODAY'S SPECIAL

SALE FROM THE GARAGE

Success! We had a great garage sale on Saturday, despite the rainy weather. After cleaning out the garage and subsequently the rest of the house - we were able to provide many buyers with great gently used items. Aaron made some perfect Garage Sale signs to direct traffic to our sale; which worked because we raked in about $800! (see note about fishing boat) We met several of our neighbors and actually had some fun in the meantime.

SALE ITEMS: clothes, CDs, my trusty stereo that I got when I was 15 (that's 13 years ago folks!) and still works beautifully, vases, picture frames, shoes, weight bench, books, cute bags and purses (I almost cried), and lots of ther random stuff

Aaron built the table you see below. He made it for me out of scrap wood when I was doing a few craft projects in the garage. It's been useful ever since.


READY WITH CHANGE: I had a minor panic attack Friday night at about 8:30 while I was readying the tables. I realized I had forgotten to get money for change from the bank! I, of course, freaked out and thought I had ruined everything and it was going to be a disaster and there was no way to remedy my oversight. Aaron, of course, remained totally calm and assured me everything would be fine. He told me to get some cash from an ATM, go to the grocery store and ask if they would mind breaking it up into small bills and quarters. So that's what I did. And although the business center at the grocery store was closed, the nicest clerk was quick to take me back to the bookkeeping office and fulfill my request. We were back in business! (Aaron also had the back-up plan of going to the neighborhood car wash and feeding the change machine bills in return for quarters. Genius!)


SADIE: Chilling as usual


HMMMM?:


SCOOP! OF COURSE: We had to keep a close eye on Scoop because she kept sneaking off with the shoes that were for sale. I finally gave up and let her have my beloved Grinch slippers. I figured I'd rather keep her busy with one victory than keep running into the yard to save shoes. Coincidentally, the Grinch slippers are the only footwear Sadie ever showed interest in. She doesn't "do" shoes, but she did like to tangle with the mean Mr. Grinch*. Must be those yellow eyes (which, true to form, were the first thing Scoop removed).


WELCOMING COMMITTEE: Aaron tried to give this mask to several little kids. But none of them would take it because they were all too scared. He was very sweet and passed out plastic Hawaiian leis to all the little ladies that came through. It was fun to see their big smiles when he draped the bright necklace over their head.




BIGGEST SALE: We had Aaron's flat bottom fishing boat out for sale, but didn't have any takers. I wonder why? (We posted an ad on Craigslist on Monday and sold it that evening, so I'm counting it as part of the garage sale profits)




ARE WE DONE YET?


*Note to self: If ever need a good put-down, reference You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch song

AFTER THE RAIN

We were hanging out with the dogs on the back porch yesterday evening after a thunderstorm, enjoying a short reprieve from the humidity. (but we didn't see any rainbows) Scoop likes to run around in the wet grass searching for anything the rain might have turned up, but Sadie prefers to supervise from the porch.


This snail was also enjoying the dry porch.

NO VACANCY

A couple of weekends ago I decided to paint the guest bedroom. I've been wanting to for a while, and finally had a good weekend to do it. Not bad, if I do say so myself. We put up new blinds and rehung the pictures in different spots. Dad was the first guest to sleep in the newly colored room, and he reported it was A-OK. (I would have taken a picture of the other side of the room, but there was laundry all over the floor and I didn't feel like moving it to take a picture.)

HOW TO TELL A TRUE PRINCESS

Last night, I got into bed and immediately felt something wasn't right. I got back out of bed and saw this:

I looked at Aaron, and asked "What is this? Did you put this here?"

Upon closer inspection:

He looked at me and replied: "Only a REAL Princess would have felt a P in her bed."

I DO STILL LOVE YOU

Yesterday was our two-year anniversary! Isn't Aaron the most handsome husband!




Aaron took me to my favorite spot for breakfast, the Satellite Cafe. We both told work we'd be in late so we could have a leisurely morning and breakfast. I had delicious blueberry pancakes where the blueberries are on the inside of the pancake! yum! Aaron had a delicious ham omelete.


On Sunday, Aaron gave me the best anniversary gift - we cleaned out and organized the garage! We did it Clean Sweep style:
1)completely empty the garage


2)make Keep, Toss, Sale piles and organize into piles of similar items(yard, fishing, tools, sports)




3)put it back together again!

The garage looks great! Although I don't have a picture of it. Sorry. We threw away a lot of junk and have a nice stack for the garage sale I decided to have this coming Saturday. The rest of this week, we'll be going through the other rooms in the house to find garage sale items. I'll take a picture after the garage sale and post it.

NEW YORK! NEW YORK!

Finally, as you might have noticed, I'm getting around to posting again. Here are pics from my recent trip to New York City. I was going for a work conference, so Momma, Renee' and Dre met me there for some quality girl time. We had a lot of fun and did some cool things.

SPECIAL DAYS

We celebrated Jessica and Taylor's shared birthday, May 12, and Kristen's first Mother's Day a few weeks ago at our house. Aaron grilled up his famous Bussey Burgers, we got a little competitive with the horseshoes, and played with Zoe and the dogs. Audrey made two delicious cakes - one for Happy Birthday and one for Happy Mother's Day. Nice day.

BOATLOADS O' FUN

We got the boat the last weekend in March and have been enjoying the lakes around Austin ever since. Whether it's just Aaron and me on a leisurely Sunday afternoon, spending a fun Saturday out with friends or the guys on a Friday night fishing trip, the boat has been lots of fun. I'm learning how to drive the boat and Aaron is a pro at backing the boat/trailer up our driveway - that's right, he can back that sucker up the entire length of the driveway - piece of cake. The neighbors even commented on how impressed they were. He's got skills.