How True!

On the first day of school, a first-grader handed his teacher a Note from his mother. The note read, "The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parents."

The rain came down and the flood came up..

This is what the canal in our neighborhood looks like on a normal day.

This is the view from the other side of the same canal during "Ernesto"

Just thought you would be interested in seeing the difference

First Day of School

Kelby

First year in Middle School

I can't believe that my "baby" is in 6th grade. Kelby seems to like middle school. I think he actually looks forward to school each day.

Nellysa Nellysa is a Freshman in High School. I think she probably likes it, but she will never admit that. She tells me how boring school is every day. Nellysa is taking "American Sign Language" class this year. She has the same teacher that taught Levi (could be interesting).
Just a quick note about school supplies.... I AM OVER IT!! Every store in this city is out of 2" binders and every teacher that my kids have require 2" binders. I tried to buy ahead of time, but there was no way to know that we needed so many.

Moved

I moved most of Kirk's pictures to www.papaspud.blogspot.com
You can also just click on the "Kirk" link under "Daily Reads". Check it out!

Amazing Picture

Kirk sent me this picture that was taken on the ship a few weeks ago .

New Baby

Our New Baby

After the storm "Ernesto", the kids went out to check the yard and when they checked on our turtles, there were two hatchlings. One got smashed (probably by one of the big turtles), and this is the other one. We think that the flooding forced them out of their nest. There could be others, but this is all we saw.

We think this is a very young hatchling because the shell is so delicate. Levi made a terrarium for the baby and we are keeping it warm and humid with a spray bottle and small lamp. We read online that they eat soaked cat kibbles and tomatoes. There we other diet suggestions, but since we had the kibbles and a tomato readily available, that's what it gets. I think it's name should be Ernesto. What do you think?

Ernesto

Neither rain, sleet,......or tropical storm will keep BINGO from happening. We have lived here through many bad storms and a few bad hurricanes. I think "Bonnie" was our first hurricane after moving here. I don't remember if it fell on a Tuesday or Thursday (those are BINGO days), but while we were going over to a friend's house to "ride out the storm", everybody else went to play BINGO. Over the years, I have even seen them chain the signs down, but they never cancel BINGO. I guess it gives people something to do during the storm.

These pictures were taken in our area before the worst of the storm hit. This is mild flooding compared to the rest of the area. The first picture is a canal in our neighborhood that is badly overflowing.

Across this road is supposed to be a parking lot and a big lawn.

This is on part of a main road near our house. Back about 1/2 mile, this main road was closed because of flooding.

The ducks were in heaven.

The canal on the other side of the neighborhood.

One side of the road by my kids' bus stop.

The other side -- pretty close to going over the road.

We were very fortunate in that we only lost power for a very brief time and we did not have any property damage from the storm. The ground is just very mushy in throughout our yard and neighborhood. Lucky!