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.

So, as if being 35 weeks prego (and thus 20 weeks swollen) wasn’t enough, Bob and I are taking the plunge into suburbia next week – yes folks, we bought a house. It’s up north in a community called Fall Creek – just due south of Beltway 8 and right next to 59. I don’t have any good pix of it yet – this one below is from the side of the house, seeing more trees than house – but we will be moving in next week, so expect those coming really soon.

Currently we are living in a sea of boxes – compounding the fact that this apartment has been too small for us for about – oh say – 2 years now. But relief is in sight, and we are excited to have more space to breathe in, and a yard for our little one to play in.

The fun part is now we need some furniture to fill the house, and another (more fuel efficient) car. So though I say I am ready to have this little girl come join us any time… really… I can wait a few more weeks ’til we get things taken care of!

My family had a great Thanksgiving Day tradition in Cleveland. My parents would put the turkey in the oven by early afternoon and we’d head out to a Christmas tree farm on the west side of the city. We’d wandered around the farm for quite bit of time before picking the annual Christmas tree. Instead of cutting the tree down, we would dig it up. We’d put the tree into the van, roots and all, and took it home. We then moved the tree into the house and planted it into a box. It was a nice tradition on Thanksgiving day and it was nice to have a live Christmas tree.

The week before Thanksgiving, Anna and I bought a small potted-pine tree from the store. We’re planning on spending Christmas Day out of town with family, so we didn’t need a big tree. Maybe I’m just a Christmas tree-party pooper, but I thought the little tree would work well.

The day before Thanksgiving my parents brought us this really nice Christmas tree stand. I thought it was pretty cool, but the small pine tree wouldn’t fit into the base of stand. I thought “Well, we can just put the stand somewhere and put something else nice on it and that will be it.”

Saturday, my parents came back to Houston on their way home to Corpus. The first thing they brought into the door was this huge seven-foot box. My father had a big grin on his face and said he brought us a Christmas tree for our new stand. At first was I was pretty scared. Our apartment is already over flowing with stuff. Storing the box was going to be problematic let alone putting the tree up in our living room. Needless to say the Christmas tree stayed in the box until my parents left.

Anna slept most of the afternoon on Sunday so I decided to put the new Christmas tree up. After some finagling I got everything in place and was able to make enough space for it to look good in our apartment. The result can be seen below:

It’s nice to have the tree up. We put the small pine tree outside our front door and we now have the big Christmas tree up in our living room. The site definitely makes it feel more like the holidays.
- Bob

When Bob and I left this morning to drop him off to work – it was a nice 70 degrees, with a chilly wind cutting through. By the time I got home 15 minutes later, it had dropped to 50, and the biting cold wind was on the increase. Dew has even formed on all of my windows due to the temperature change. It’s making for a pretty interesting day.

Hopefully the winds of change will hit our site here soon too. Bob and I are trying to get up a new slide show tool that will be fun to use, and maybe a few other changes too. Check back in the next couple of weeks to see what’s happening.

Another unbearably hot summer is over here in Texas, and magically we survived. Our biggest help came from visiting family in both Seattle and Corpus Christi, and having a few family members come and hang out with us. We decided that it doesn’t matter wherever you live, there is always some time of year that just stinks weatherwise. And for here, it’s the summer. But it’s finally over, and the Bolster’s are now out moving and shakin’ again…

Bob is back up to speed again with the busy season. Yea – it ended for him about 6 months late for the last fiscal year… so there really was only a two month break. But he enjoyed the down time, and has now kicked into high gear again. His client right now is actually so close to our house that he can walk there – and Anna have been enjoying the rights to the car some more. Football season has also started up, and Bob has enjoyed watching – or listening – to all of the games. He has also been playing a lot with his new toy, the XBox 360. That’s why he hasn’t blogged much lately.

Anna has just been chillin’ here in Houston, trying to complete all of the assignments that Bob has given her. The homework load includes writing proposals, reviewing his work, and making books. Anna is busy trying to do lots of bookbinding, and is hoping to get some of her work up on our site here in the next little while. Also she have been busy planning and teaching the ladies in our ward how to bookbind – which has been an experience. Hopefully they are learning something!

Anna’s normal cooking disaster rate has dropped, and we only had to pull out the smoke detectors once this month.

Now that a more normal pattern is developing in our lives, we will try to get more blogs up and going. Until then… ta ta for now!

Loves,

AnnaBob