Mattie's book

Mattie wrote a book yesterday about our trip! I guess it made quite an impression on her! So I thought I'd post it...it's pretty cute! :)

This is my house when it is for sale.

And we are going to see our new house.

This is a picture of the Beaumont exit! I guess she liked our detour! :)

And we got there.

I love the way she captured the front door of our new house! :)

Our New House :)

508 Royal Palm Court

Madisonville, LA 70447

Edd has spent his first week in Louisiana! His official start date for his new position was May 1st, but they wanted him to come for the whole week. So he started on Monday, April 27th. It was a very busy week! Besides getting used to a new job, Edd was busy finishing up things for his Houston job and trying tie up loose ends by Thursday, April 30th~Closing Day for the new house. Everything finally fell into place and we now are a 2 house family!

Edd moved into our new house Thursday night! :) He spent all of his free time trying to clean thenew house and get it ready for us to move in! Although it will take him a good hour to get to andfrom work each day, he's excited for us to have a great house in a great neighborhood. :)

The kids and I were anxious to go visit Edd and the new house! Saturday morning we started our journey! We left Kingwood at about 6:15am and drove straight through. We arrived at the new house a little after 11.

The kids were so excited to finally get to see our new house in person! As soon as they were out of the van, they were off exploring! Once the kids had a chance to check things out, we ate lunch, then went to Target to get a few things Edd needed like a can opener, and silverware. I was supposed to bring the camping boxes, which had those items, but forgot. Oh well! :)

A close up of the front of the house! :)

Later in the afternoon, we tried to go fishing on the Tchefuncte River, but there were a bunch of boats, it was some boating thing on the river. We got out and watched the boats for a few minutes, then we got to see the bridge open to let the bigger boats through! That was pretty neat!

Once the bridge closed, we drove around Madisonville looking for live bait...live shrimp bait...finally had to settle for frozen shrimp, but not until after we'd caught some shrimp for our own tummies! Fried shrimp and fried catfish were the hits for the kids. Even Bethany liked them!!!

After dinner, we ended up going to Lake Ponchatrain to fish. Mattie caught a crab 4 times! Andrew caught a big snarl in his line...he didn't have it threaded right, but we fixed it. Edd, Aimee and Thomas went off to take some pictures. Bethany took my camera and got some cool pictures too!

Yesterday, Sunday, we went to church. Our new ward is a lot smaller than we are used to, but the people are really nice! The bishop and his family live in the neighborhood across the road from ours!

When we got home from church, we ate lunch, packed up, then hit the road. This time it took nearly 7 hours to get home. We had some pretty bad rain storms we drove through...at a snail's pace, then for some crazy reason we sat on the I-12 for about a half hour going nowhere!!! Once traffic got moving again, we didn't ever see any reason why we had to stop...hmmm...anyway, we ended up taking the scenic route through Beaumont, TX, where I got off on the wrong exit, I think. I was supposed to get off of I-10 and get onto HWY 90. I saw an exit sign for downtown Hwy 90 and took that, I didn't want to miss the exit and have to take I-10 all the way to Houston. So we drove around downtown Beaumont, ended up in the slum part of town, where I stopped to get directions, kinda scarry! All the signs were in Spanish, but the guy at the gas station spoke English. A nice black lady told me which way to go. So back on the road...it was about 7pm. We'd been on the road since 2:45 and finally got home at 8:35.

Even though our drive home was hard with the rain and traffic problems, it was much better than the trip down! On our way down, we took Bella, who decided to stink up her carrier right after we left!!! We drove all the way with that awful smell!!! We rolled the windows down a few times trying to get fresh air, but I thought it made it even worse!!! We survived though!!! :) Bella stayed with Edd at the new house so she can get aquainted with it before Missy comes! Edd reported to me that Bella slept with him last night, so I guess she's right at home! :)

Now, the rush begins! We've got a month to get things cleaned out, thrown out, given away, and packed! Busy, busy, busy! It will give us time to forget, at least a little bit, how painful the drive was this weekend, so hopefully it won't seem so bad when we have to do it again in a few weeks! :)

Happy Birthday to you, and you and you!!!

It has been birthday time again at our house! Edd's birthday was last Wednesday. Thomas was helping Edd open presents while the rest of us watched. Thomas ended up grabbing a small, square present to open. Once he opened it, all he saw was a box with red and black words on it. He said, "wow." He was probably thinking that it was a dumb present. A moment later, Edd looked up as saw the black and red box that Thomas had just opened and said, "WOW!" I'd surprised him with a new camera lens, which was in the box!

Edd's cool little box!

Next came Bethany's birthday, on Saturday. She was busy partying nearly all day. We only got to see her for a few hours the whole day!!! At 8am her friends from church came and kidnapped her and took her to breakfast. At 9:30, a few of B's friends from school came to pick to take her to the movies for her b-day. B got home a few minutes later, ran up and changed out of her pj's and then ran out the door, off to the movies and the mall! We didn't see B again until around 4 that afternoon! We were barely able to spend enough time with Bethany to eat dinner and then open presents. While I was making dinner, Mattie asked Bethany to pull out her loose tooth. Bethany loves pulling out teeth!!! :) Bethany began her twisting and turning method, but after a few minutes she let Mattie have a break. Mattie scampered off only to come back a few minutes later with a tooth in her hand! Mattie had pulled out her own tooth!!! :) Once Bethany blew out the candles on her cake, she was off again! This time to the "FISH DANCE" (a dance at Kingwood HS for the in-coming freshmen to meet, who are coming from Riverwood Middle and Creekwood Middle). She didn't get home until about 10:45, just in time for some b-day cake! :) I guess we need to get used to the busy life of a teenager!!!

Bethany ready to blow out her candles, then off to the dance!

Thomas finally had his birthday on Tuesday. For weeks, he's been wanting some "Moon Sand" and I told him that he could get it for his b-day. So each week, when he sees it at the store, he'd ask me, "Is it my birfday, Momma?" Tuesday morning, when Thomas got up, we told him it was his birthday. He just shook his head no and said, "No, it's not my birfday." While the kids were at school, we did all of the things that Thomas likes to do like play "paint" on the trampoline~I sit in the middle and he crashes into me to spill the paint...he got it from watching Thomas the Tank Engine spill paint in one of the stories. Each time he'd crash into me, he'd pick a new color to spill. Then we headed in to play "CARNATOR" on my bed...this is where we both pretend to be carnator dinosaurs and we fight and hide underneath the pillows. In the afternoon, Riley, Thomas' friend from 2 doors down, came over to play. He brought Thomas a present...bubbles! So they all spent the afternoon trying to blow bubbles! Thomas was so excited when he'd blow one!

After dinner, it was time for Thomas' family b-day party! Thomas had so much practice opening everyone's presents that he was SUPER FAST!!! I think it only took him five minutes to open all his presents from start to finish! Then we were off to blow out the candles on the cake. Poor Thomas really struggles with blowing air out~I think he ends up blowing it down. Anyway, when it came time to blow out his candle, he had to try a few times...it gave us a good chuckle! :)

THOMAS BLOWING OUT HIS BIRTHDAY CANDLE

Thomas is following after Andrew's footsteps...once we sang "Happy Birthday" and blew out the candles, they were off playing with the new presents. They had no interest in the cake or ice cream. After the rest of us had cake & ice cream, we went out to ride bikes. It was a beautiful night and Thomas had gotten a new bike for his b-day! He was pretty excited, especially since his new bike would make him, "go super super fast!" I think he had a great birthday!

When Thomas woke up yesterday, the first thing out of his mouth was, "Is it my birfday today?" So I think he had a good day and wanted to do it all over again! I have tried to keep the errands to a minimum this week so he could do the fun things he likes to do here at home.

Mattie's Field Trip

Mattie's field trip was off to the Houston Livestock Show, on Friday the 13th. We had a good time walking around checking things out. Of course some of our highlights were the baby pigs, just a few hours old, the LONGHORN, and sitting on the tractors.

We walked around and saw a few other aninmals, like the rabbits and the chicks. We also watched a milking presentation. Andrew & Mattie seemed to really have a fun time! We ended up staying longer than I had expected!

When we were done, we drove home in Sally!!! :)

Sally is the name of our new van! Edd was able to pick up Sally the night before! Just in time for our Spring Break trip!!!

Once we got home from the fieldtrip, we loaded up the van and headed out to New Orleans! Because of the rain and tons of traffic, we didn't make it to New Orleans until about 9pm. We left the house before 2, so that was a long drive!!!

It was fun to drive over the big bridge in Baton Rouge that crosses the Mississippi. I didn't realize the Mississippi went through Baton Rouge! Thomas thought the bridge had a monster under it! I think that was the hightlight of the drive out. :)

When we finally got to the hotel, Thomas was so excited that they had a pool! He wanted to go swimming. So we quickly changed and went swimming! Then it was off to bed.

Saturday morning, we went to look at houses and tried to figure out which area we liked the best. Turns out we liked the Madisonville area and also the Mandeville area. (They are on the north shore of Lake Ponchatrain. sp??? I guess I'll know for sure in a few months. :)

After looking at houses, we drove into New Orleans and walked around with the kids and saw the big cathedral next to Jackson Square. There was a couple who'd just gotten married, so we got to see them leave. They left in a parade of friends. I guess that's the tradition down there. Sounds pretty fun. Luckily it just sprinkled a bit while we were walking around the French Quarter.

We stayed the night with the Schofields, Kelly and Jo, who we knew from Kingwood. Kelly is the guy who Edd is replacing at the refinery. So they talked about work stuff. We went to church with Kelly and Jo, then drove home. It didn't take as long to get home, which was nice. We got home in 5 1/2 hours.

Tears of Joy or Sadness???

Well, our saga with Stu wasn't as long as I had thought. We were starting to get used to "Stu" when one day, it came to an abrupt end.

It all started one Saturday morning a few weeks ago...Edd was letting our friend, Perry, borrow the truck. Perry got to our house right before we were heading out the door for soccer so Edd took the keys to "Stu" and backed out so Perry could back the truck out. Then Edd pulled "Stu" back into the driveway. A couple minutes later I came outside to get into van so we could head off to soccer.

Well, Edd was quite perplexed...he'd left the keys in the ignition, at least that's what he'd remembered doing...but they weren't there!!! We hunted for the keys for about 10 minutes, then we had to leave to get the girls to soccer.

I ran inside and grabbed the keys to Earl, our white van, and we threw all the chairs and soccer gear into the back of Earl and rushed off to soccer. When we got back home, we continued to look for the keys. We looked all weekend. No keys.

Monday morning, I went to the rental place where we got "Stu" to see if they had an extra key. There was no extra key anywhere. So I told them I'd go back home and keep looking. I looked and looked and looked and looked...they were gone.

Thursday afternoon, I called the rental place and told them we couldn't find the keys and they'd have to come tow the van. The told me that call the dealership to find out how much the key was. We'd have to pay for that and the towing too. Turns out the key was $240 + towing. OUCH!!!!!!!!!

When the tow truck driver came, it was raining. It had been raining pretty much all day really. He got "Stu" loaded up and started pulling away just as Bethany got home. She was ecstatic to see "Stu" leave. I had mixed feelings...I was glad to be done with that part of my life, but so frustrated that we couldn't find the key and would have to pay a fortune to get the key replaced.

As I watched "Stu" drive away, I had a few tears come to my eyes. Tears of joy or sadness...a little of both.