Happy Halloween!

This is our first Halloween to live in a neighborhood where lots of kids will go trick-or-treating. So, the girls really wanted to have fun decorating our house for Halloween. We went to our church Trunk-or-Treat first tonight and then went trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. The girls really had a fun time! Steven went to a church Halloween party and he let me take a picture of his costume before he left. Mom, it looks like Steven found an excuse to wear that suit that you just love! Ha Ha! ;) He can't wait for you to see the picture! Here's some pics of our Halloween night and of our house decorations. Natalie was such a beautiful Medieval princess. She made her own head piece and choker in her Art class at school. They turned out really pretty! Lily was an adorable Aggie basketball player. Sorry Aaron M., but it's a lot easier to find an Aggie uniform around here than a UT one! One of Coult's patients got a basketball signed by some of the Aggie women's basketball players and their coach and gave it to Coult to give to Lily to go with her costume.

Camping trip

This past weekend, we went camping at Lake Somerville. It's a lake at a state park about 45 minutes from our home. We had never been camping as a family before, so we weren't sure how it was going to go. We were especially worried about how Lily was going to do. She did great! Natalie has never slept all night in a tent before either. She has always chickened out in the past because she was scared. She did great too! Coult even taught her how to build a campfire. We got to see some raccoons while we were in our tent Friday night trying to go to sleep. One of them even unzipped our empty tent bag which I had left out on the picnic table! The girls were really excited to see the raccoons. Just our luck, we ended up being the only campers who weren't Boy Scouts in our whole camping area. Which meant that we were serenaded by "revielle" early Sat. morning. Actually, Lily and I were the only ones still asleep at 6 am because Natalie and Coult were already up trying to start our morning camp fire. Coult got up super early because he woke to something pulling on one of our tent poles at about 5 am. It turned out to be a 30-40 lb raccoon trying to get to the bags of food in our tent! Then, after the raccoon ran away, a skunk walked right across his feet while he was sitting in his chair! He was so scared that it was going to spray him! Coult and the girls went fishing for awhile, but didn't catch anything. It was fun for them anyway. We also waded along the lake shore for a while before we left. We had so much fun! I'm not much of a camper, but since it went so well, I wouldn't mind going again. Here are some pics from our camping trip:

A memorable night with our girls!

A few nights ago, Lily was in such a great mood and really wanted to participate with the family! It was awesome! She was so connected with us and we just didn't want the night to end. She played "ring around the rosy" and "duck, duck, goose" with Coult, Natalie and I for over an hour. She is dangerous with "duck, duck, goose" though! LOL She wouldn't let us get past the first few words before she was pulling us all down onto the floor! Eventually, Natalie asked her if she wanted to attack Coult and they ended up rough-housing with him and playing "evil scientist plastic surgeon". Natalie has such a fun imagination and she is great with helping Lily to use her imagination too.I know he really enjoyed that since it doesn't happen often. They were being so silly, so I took a couple of short videos of them. And yes, those are Lily's pajama pants that Natalie is putting on Coult's head! Natalie said "Mom! She's actually playing with us! I don't want this to ever stop!" I wish I could have gotten a video of "duck, duck, goose", but it was hard to video and play at the same time. It made us so happy to have fun like this with our girls. The night before this happened, I had been praying to be able to understand Lily better and to be able to be more patient with her challenges. She is having a lot of anxiety issues that have us really worried right now. That night was an answer to my prayers. It was Heavenly Father's way of letting me know that Lily really does love to be with us, but it's just hard for her to show loving emotions and really allow herself to connect with others. There have been a few other times that this has happened. But never for this length of time. I'm really trying to hold onto this experience to remind myself that even though times can be challenging with a child on the autism spectrum, that they are truly fun children who just need those around them to try to understand what they have to cope with everyday. Enjoy the videos!

Happy 6th B-Day Lily!!!

Lily turned six years old on the 30th of September!!! She wanted to have a Batman themed b-day party! I'm not sure why, but that's what she wanted, so that's what we did. Coult almost always makes the girls birthday cakes. He did a great job making a milk, egg free Batman cake for Lily. We all had yellow and black teeth by the time we finished eating! LOL Here are some pics of Lily's party and of her playing with some of her gifts:

All is quiet

Well, the last of our "evacuees" just went home. It seems strangely quiet now. I'm glad that we were able to provide a place for them to stay during the storm and until their electrical power and water were restored. But, I know that they were all glad to be able to return to their own homes. My parents house sustained pretty significant damage, so it will be a while before things return to normal for them. Their roof was stripped down to the ply wood in several places, so they have lots of water damage inside. Alisa and Michael's house had some damage to the outside walls, but not much water inside. My grandfather's house had some water blown in, so he will probably be getting new carpet. Aunt Shirley and Uncle Paul lost some shingles, but they aren't sure about the inside of their house yet. I guess they will find out tonight when they get home. It's amazing the destruction that a hurricane can cause. It's so sad to look at the pictures of my parents home and the surrounding land and seeing all the trees broken and shingles littering the ground. It's horrible to think of the people in Galveston and Bolivar who didn't survive the storm. I'm sure there were many who were swept out into the Gulf and will never be found. We were very blessed here in College Station. The hurricane shifted just a bit before it made landfall, so we had tropical storm winds here instead of the forecasted hurricane winds. We didn't have any damage at our home and didn't lose power at all. I'll be glad when hurricane season is over.

Hurricane Ike

It's 2:30 am and I can't sleep. Hurricane Ike should be to our area in the next hour or so. The wind is only gusting to about 30 mph so far, but it's going to get much worse soon. I managed to go to sleep a little bit, but every time I do, I wake up from flashback/nightmares about the tornado. I have only had tornado "flashbacks" about 3 times since the tornado, and tonight was one of them. I know that if I hear glass breaking, that is going to be the trigger and all my memories of that night will come back. Just the bits and pieces that I have remembered over the last few years are terrifying enough. I don't want anymore. But, I don't want to scare Natalie and Lily, so I thought I would just go downstairs where I won't hear the windows rattle so much. Coult is having to stay at the hospital tonight because they want to make sure that all those on shift tomorrow will be able to be there. Steven is here, so that makes me feel better. But, I still wish Coult was here. He's always been there to give me a hug and calm me down after a flashback dream. I'm so worried about my family in Nome right now too. I know they're getting pounded by the storm right now. I can't imagine how scared they must be with the wind speeds so high where they are. This hurricane is crazy! It's huge! I thought when we moved here that we would be far enough away that we wouldn't have to worry about hurricanes anymore. Not so. My family would have evacuated here, but the weather here probably won't be much better. I keep thinking about how Galveston Island may never be the same. We have gone there numerous times and it's hard to imagine it being under water. I will be so glad when this hurricane is over. Earlier today, Coult and I found out that his maternal grandmother had been evacuated from a nursing home and flown to our town. We found her in Reed Arena where they are housing many special needs patients. It was a sight I will never forget when we walked into the arena and saw row upon row of mostly elderly and/or handicapped people laying on cots. They were being cared for by many military doctors and nurses as well as volunteers from the area. I still can't believe how many people were there and what "organized chaos" it was. I mean, they were doing there best under the circumstances, but no one should end up like that. We were able to give them some helpful info about his grandmother and we tried to comfort her as best we could. I don't know if she knew who we were or not, but she seemed to have some recognition in her eyes when she heard our voices. Thankfully, the doctor assigned to her agreed that they couldn't care for her properly in that facility and they were able to transfer her to a local nursing home. As soon as the weather clears, we will go and check on her. She's actually only a few miles away from us on the same road that Coult's hospital is on. I don't think she was sent here by accident. I know Heavenly Father had a hand in getting her to a city where she has family that could look after her. Coult's parents had to evacuate to another area, so they are unable to be here for her right now and I know that is very difficult on Coult's mom. I hope that we were able to put her mind at ease somewhat. At least now she knows that her mom will be looked after until they can all return home after the hurricane. I really should try to get some sleep now.

Lily: Queen of the day!

Today Lily was chosen to be the "Queen of the day" in her kindergarten class. She got to wear a beautiful crown and have a book written about her. She and her classmates even drew pictures of her to put in the book. Lily did an excellent job drawing her picture and writing her name!

Busy couple of weeks..

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. The last couple of weeks have been pretty crazy around here! First, the new school year started. Natalie and Lily seem to be enjoying their new school year so far. Lily loves her teacher and the para that works with her. We have been blessed that Natalie and Lily have always had great teachers working with them. Natalie is enjoying being the big kid on campus. She's in 6th grade this year, so this is her last year on the intermediate campus. She even got to choose her own locker this year! She picked a top one, of course. Last year she had a bottom locker and things kept getting dropped on her head. Remember those days? She wasn't thrilled about having to "dress-out" in PE this year. But now that she's done it a couple of times, I think she's getting accustomed to it. Lily is in kindergarten this year! She did great the first week! She says she likes kindergarten. Unfortunately, this week she has been sick. She came home with a high temp. Tuesday afternoon and wasn't able to go back to school for the rest of this week. Her temp is finally down today, so hopefully she's on the mend. Earlier this week, several members of my family (my mom, dad, grandpa, brother, sister, and brother-in-law) all evacuated to our house because of Hurricane Gustav. Thankfully, southeast Texas was spared. They're all back home now. I'm so glad that we were able to provide a place for them to evacuate to. We had lots of fun while they were here. We had air mattresses everywhere at night, but I don't think anyone was too uncomfortable. We really hated to see them go, but life goes on. Here are some pics of the first day of school: