Snow in Houston

Wow! I've lived in Houston since 1993 and never seen it snow like this. On Friday, December 4th, 2009 we set a record in Houston - earliest snow on record. The kids had a blast playing it in. I'll post some pictures later. It did make me realize however that I don't really have winter coats or clothes for my kids. As I'm sure that not many Houstonians have either. You just don't really need that kind of stuff in Houston very often. Harrison came in after playing in it for about 2 hours - soaking wet so I told him to go change into dry clothes and only a native Houstonian would change into what he did...shorts and a t-shirt. Crazy kids.

This was definitely an occasion for the memory books and the record books!

Pictures from the Queen's Party

I'm a little behind the 8 ball on getting this stuff done but here are some pics from the big blow out.

"Nadine Wilson Day" - August 29th

It's been awhile since I posted but wanted to get this out there. One of our neighbors, Nadine Wilson, is moving to be closer to her family. She has been in the neighborhood since 1953 (so 56 years). She is an institution on Cedarbrake as far as I'm concerned and I'm so sad to see her go, although I know that it will be a great new chapter in her life. We had a BIG going away party for her on August 29th and the Mayor of Spring Valley came and gave her a proclamation declaring August 29th as "Nadine Wilson Day" in our humble little city of Spring Valley. I believe she was pleased as punch about this. I know I was. I will post some pics from the big party soon but wanted to get this post up.
She closed on the sale of her home yesterday and it was the most heartbreaking thing to see the "SOLD" sign on her house when I came home from work yesterday. But, today Nadine was still sitting out on the Driveway with Winnie just like it was any ol' day in Spring Valley, not like she's even got a ton to do before the moving trucks come on Friday. We are heading out of town for the holiday weekend and I'm not sure I could bare to see those trucks pulling away with Our Miss Nadine, The Driveway Queen.
May God Bless you and keep you safe on your new adventure. We love you and we'll miss you more than you'll ever know!

Our Queen

Nadine, the queen of Cedarbrake, turned 29 again last week. The neighbors all pulled together and put together a gathering to celebrate with her. We had a great time and the food was good. The boys pulled out a grill and Hank cooked the burgers and dogs. Winnie made the cake and Nadine partied like a rock star.


Generations on Cedarbrake

Hurricane Ike doesn't slow Cedarbrake down!

Although most of us had some damage and tons of clean up, it was mostly minor damage considering how many trees we have in the neighborhood. However some of our neighbors lost their entire houses due to trees crashing through them but thank goodness no one was hurt. We are going on our 11th day without power and I believe most of us are SICK of it. Many of us went back to work yesterday and most of the kids went back to school today (praise the Lord!). Almost everyone headed for the hills (aka A/C) when the weather turned hot or they bought a generator and a window unit. Boy, are they living the life of luxury - HA! Bo and I are returning to the neighborhood tonight, power or not, because it's just too hard to get any place without gridlock traffic. So many traffic lights are still out around town. It makes even the closest and simplest errands extremely time consuming and road-ragish!

Please post your photos too. I apologize in advance if I offend anyone - it's a joke, already! This is a photo of some of our neighbors waiting in line after IKE, for an MRE from a POD provided by FEMA. Aren't they pitiful!

2008 - 29th Annual Cedarbrake B-B-Q

The boys in the 'hood, once again, hosted our annual B-B-Q. We aren't actually sure how many years ago we started this so we decided to just call it the 29th Annual along with the year - year after year. This year we had cups made (provided by Wanda Taylor at Greenwood King) and t-shirts (provided by Bo Bothe at BrandExtract). Boy, we are big time now.

Not sure of the actual head count but I'm pretty sure we were pushing at least 150+ coming and going - maybe more if you count all the little ones running around.