Ike has come and gone and left he’s fury on Houston. I was in France on business and Anna was in Seattle visiting family for two weeks when Ike hit our home. So the most important thing is that we are safe, we’re happy, and we have power at home.

Unfortunately for our home, it didn’t fair as well during Ike. During the storm or pine tree in our front yard came down and smashed into the front of our house. Again, we are fortunate because it is a pine tree and it didn’t destroy the home, but now we’re figuring out the implications of the tree coming down on our house.

It took almost two weeks, but on Friday the tree company finally drove their crane up and removed the tree. The whole thing is still kind of surreal.

I’ll post pictures of them removing the tree later.

Pictures from the day of the Hurricane:

The aftermath:

I really loved this pine tree in our front yard. I’m sad it won’t be guiding me home anymore:

I have to say, I am so grateful for the Church being action driven. We weren’t even home and our new friends, because let’s be really we’ve only lived here for three months, came over, trimmed up the tree, patched up some of the shingles, and cleaned up the water from in the house. Amazingly blessed.

Oooo.. one more story to tell. Bob loves to try and play with Kristina. Now that she smiles and is more responsive (and might I add opinionated), he loves to do anything to illicit these responses. Well this morning while I was getting ready for church, he lying on the bed playing with her. His game is airplane - swooshing her around in the palm of his hand. Well, after going awhile, he has her in mid air above his face, he asks her, “Gee, no smiles for daddy?” Her response was classic - just a straight shot of spit up, landing on his face. A sea of white starts to cover Bob, as he started to whimper, and puts her down. Couldn’t have commissioned a better shot - she has great timing, I must say.

It’s been a while - so much has been happenin’ I hardly know where to start. I will just provide quick run down…

While Bob was in France, Kristina and I took off for the lovely Seattle area to visit family and friends. She has built a good fan club up there, and we had tons of fun. Her cousin
Hannah (who’s middle name is Christina) just loved baby Kristina and thought she was so fun. She also had a “baby” too and we both got to feed our babies and change their diapers. I would have traded her diapers with her any day. Kristina and I also made a trip out to the family cabin too - and she got her first glimpse of the ocean while we were there which I am sure she will remember all of her life. Both her Morfar (Swedish for mother’s father) and Mormor (mother’s mother) thought the world of her. Morfar kept telling people how good she was, and how she never cried. Well, news to you Morf, you need a hearing aid, or you tune out the tears really well. Several times she was crying, and it seemed like he didn’t even notice. That was pretty funny.

Well… while all of us were out of the state, Hurricane Ike paid us a visit. Ikie must have been upset that we were gone because there was our tall pine sitting on top of our house. That was sad to see out tree go, and sadder to have holes in the roof. Luckily, we have great friends here that took care of the house for us, and helped minimize the damage and patch up things for us. Just on Friday we finally got a company to come in and take the tree off of the house, and we are in the process of getting bids for the repairs. Watching them take the tree off the house was really cool actually. In 20 minutes they had set up the crane, put straps on the tree, lifted it off the roof and on to the lawn, cut it up and cleaned everything up and left. Very efficient.

Bob’s brother Seanie left on his mission this week, so Bob and I drove down to Corpus to visit with him right after we both got back to Houston on the 20th. It was tough trying to get down there after all that traveling (especially for Bob with the 11 hour flight, and a 7 hour time difference!) but it was well worth seeing Seanie again before he took off. While in Corpus, Kristina had her first belly laugh. I was getting Kristina ready for bed - so I took off her dress, and then took off the diaper and looked in the diaper bag for a new one. When I returned to her, I found her wet from head to toe with pee (luckily, I had her on the changing pad). Well that was pretty funny to me… so I started to laugh. Well Kristina thought it was funny too and she started to laugh too. Then a tiny giggle turned to a full on belly laugh… the cutest and funniest thing I have every seen. Really there was a twinkle in her eye as to say, “Got you this time, Mom!”

Bob has been working like crazy… averaging 64 hours a week for the past two months. The sad thing is that his busy season only started 3 weeks ago, and they only ask for something like 50 hours a week. So life as been a little out of balance for him to say the least, but hopefully it will get back on track here soon enough.

With all this going on, I was slightly distracted on Friday (trying to find something to blame this on…), and made the 2nd worst meal of our marriage - only to be topped by tuna surprise. I talked to a friend that day, and had a conversation about Bob’s mom’s good Mexican cookin’. Well, it put me in the mood, and I thought I would just attempt to do the cooking myself. What a mistake. I burned the rice (a serious burn - probably will need a new pot) made the world’s chewiest corn tortillas, the meat turned out tough, and the beans were somehow tasteless. I did manage to microwave a can of corn ok, and cook up some peppers and onions but that just didn’t make up for the fact that everything else just stunk (literally - the rice stunk of smoke). Looks like I need more Mexican training.

Well… there’s the news. I will try to post pictures of the adventures (when I can figure out this whole ftp thing… it’s a little much for a non-computer nerd) and maybe even post photos of our new painted study. I might even shock the world and post again soon. But don’t cross your fingers for that one.

I’ve finally put up our photo album application. I still want to make some changes so that pictures can be separated, but for now there are lots of pictures of Kristina’s first month of life. I’ll post some more pictures soon, to bring things up to date because she keeps growing.

Also, if you click on the pictures in the application a larger version of the picture will be shown.

Click on the photos link or go here:   Photos

- Bob

I’m sitting on the train going from Le Havre to Paris, watching the picturesque French countryside go by. Lots of wheat, cows, trees, and a few houses scattered here and there. It is fun to see the churches in the little towns and watch them rise and fall as we go through the countryside. My in-laws have conditioned me to call churches in Europe kyrkas– the Swedish word for church. We visited so many kyrkas in Sweden last year it makes it more interesting to see the different architecture of the churches here in northwestern France.

It’s quite relaxing to be sitting on the training. The movement is pretty soothing; now I know why Kristina falls asleep in the back of the car when we come home from church. Anna and I always appreciate it when she does that.

France has been interesting so far. It is always fun to see the way other people live their lives, the way cultures interact, and the way they eat differently. I don’t know if I can name everything I have eaten, but I did try escargot. Ironically, I think the best meal we get everyday is at the company cafeteria.

The other neat thing about my visit so far is the room we are working in. It’s your normal conference room filled with cords and laptops. True it is the standard corporate blah, but we have a large window in the room that we keep open and it allows fresh air to flow into the room. A fresh breeze is constantly coming into the room and has probably help keep back the jet lag. The air is truly rejuvenating.

I’ll spend Friday night through Sunday in Paris which should be fun, thoug it is weird to be so far away from Anna and Kristina.