I love these shirts! Thanks Grandma Tingey!!!

Just in case you still can't read what it says: "YOU DON'T KNOW ME" and then below it says, "FEDERAL WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM"

Grandma even sent a little something for me. I really love this ornament! It is so pretty! It says, "A Mother is the guardian angel of the family"

This is Wesley posing in front of 'his' pumpkin. He was being silly one night making faces and shining the light on the wall to make "big pumpkin faces", as he said. We are super excited for fall and all the fun holidays that are coming up!!


Brady made it home from his vacation to California. He brought home some gifts from grandma, along with a whole suit case full of Hot Wheels that he has had forever. And some other things. Wesley is really excited. He also mailed a bunch of "toys" home. I am sure his mom and dad are happy to be getting rid of a few more stored boxes from another one of their children. Ha ha ha ha ha. I will let Brady do a post to show you all of his fun stuff.

My Big Belly at 13+ Weeks.......

Side view.

I can't look down and see my toes!!!!!


Okay, so I mentioned that my belly has suddenly popped out. So, here ya go. Now you can see for yourself. These aren't the best pics, but you get the idea. I know I wasn't this big with the other two kids at this point. I seriously look like I did with the other two kids when I was 26 weeks, not 13. Yes, I am coming up on 14 weeks. My lungs are already getting squished and my sciatic nerve is giving out on me like crazy. At least the stretches help at this point. Anyway, I am in shock. Hopefully I just got big fast and now things will slow down. Or I am going to fall over. I may not look so big to some of you, but I feel huge already. For skinny, scrawny old me, I think I am huge!!
Michelle, I want to see your belly now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
'

All Wesley wants for Christmas is.......

A green 4-Wheeler!! Our neighbor a couple houses down has one of those power wheels and Wesley really likes it. He told me he really wants a 4-Wheeler for Christmas. I told him to write a letter to Santa. I would love to get him one. We shall see though. It was kinda fun for us to have the kids all home last week. The streets a very quiet now that the schools have re-opened. We were out every day all day last week. The weather was so wonderful. Now, it has warmed back up and the humidity is back. I can't wait for it to cool down for a while.

Aubrey pushing her friend Gavin. Do you love that Aubrey has no shoes on and is in her pajamas??

This is one of our newest pieces of furniture. A friend of ours is down sizing to a smaller apartment, so we bought this piece (he called it a Beau's Chest or Queen Anne's Chest), a little dresser, a book shelf, and a chair. I absolutely love this piece!!! It is a nice start to filling up our front sitting room, which has been empty for a very long time. It is an antique. I'd like to find out more about it. I just love it.
I had Brady pull out my Fall/Halloween/Thanksgiving decorations last night. I love fall. I love decorating for fall. My favorite is to decorate for Thanksgiving. Last year I bought some resin figures on sale at Hobby Lobby. One of them is this beautiful Native American couple holding baskets of Indian Corn. I couldn't find it in all of the fall boxes and Brady eventually found it stuffed into one of the Christmas boxes and the mans head was broken off!!!! But, Brady is trying to glue all of the pieces together and we will see how it turns out. It is sitting on top of the chest pictured above.

Time Marches On Anyway.....

Aubrey got a hold of the camera this time......... funny girl.
It is usually Wesley.










Well, it has been a week and a couple of days since the hurricane hit and life seems to be returning back to normal more and more. Although there are still plenty of messes to clean up. Slowly people are getting power back. Slowly people are getting back to life as we knew it before.
There are so many good people in this area who go out of there way to help those in need. I am so grateful to see that.
So, enough on Ike, he will soon be only a memory........a very tragic memory for some. Our prayers go out to all who are suffering and in pain and who have lost so much from all this.


Now, how are the Tingey's? We are marching forward doing what we can to help those who are still with out power etc. The kids are good. Rowdy, but good. Church was a doozy today. We only had sacrament meeting though. Aubrey was sad because she really wanted to go to nursery. Even Wesley said he wanted to go to his class.


WESLEY: Wesley has been really emotional lately??? Maybe he is having sympathy emotions from his mom? But, he is good. He is funny as ever. He is learning more and more vocabulary, and it makes us laugh to hear how he uses some words. Last night he was talking about being disappointed and how it really "freaks 'him' out". Makes no sense, I know. So, we spent some time explaining what disappointed means.
I keep asking him what he wants to be for Halloween. Usually he tells me he wants to be a train. The other day I asked him what he wanted to be, and he told me he wants to be a green gumball! His friend, Stacey, was here and she said, "And I will be a pink gumball and me and Wesley can get married and kiss!". Oh my goodness. That was funny. The even funnier part was when Wesley said, "I am not going to marry you. I'm not going to marry anybody. I'm just a kid!". Phew! What a relief. Lets hope he keeps that mentality for long while.


AUBREY: Aubrey is so funny with her baby dolls. She carries them around, talks to them, sings to them, and even changes their diapers. The cutest part of that is when she grabs there feet together and lifts their legs to wipe their bums. She is going to be a very good helper, I am sure, when this next baby gets here. She loves Barney right now. It is cute. We have a Barney DVD with nursery rhymes and songs and she will sit and sing all the songs along with Barney and his gang. It is so sweet. She has a great ear for music and is really good at mimicking the music.
Wesley is in for it because Aubrey has started to fight back. It is about to drive me nuts. They hit each other all day long it seems like. Any suggestions on what I can do to control this????


BRADY AND DEBBIE: Brady gets to go back to the office tomorrow, which is sooner than he thought he'd be going back. It will be nice for him, I'm sure. Debbie is just happy because she finally got her floors mopped. It is amazing what having a clean floor can do for a mom. And oh! Lets just say her belly really popped out over night. Time for the maternity clothes!! We celebrated out 5 year wedding anniversary this past week! Brady bought Debbie some flowers, juice, Root beer, and Basic 4 Cereal. It was wonderful. We'll really celebrate later when there isn't so much to do. Debbie's friend, Amber, was so thoughtful and brought over a pretty blooming plant.

Here are a couple of pics from our wedding day. We were sealed in the Monticello, Utah Temple by Debbie's Grampa Hawkins.

What an adorable couple, eh??

IKE

I am sure y'all have been anxious to see some pics and hear more about how we have been doing since Ike left his mark here in the Houston area. I am sure you have seen the news and therefore have seen footage of some of the destruction, especially in Galveston.
For the most part, I feel like we were pretty prepared as far as having food and water. However, I do have a list of 'Things to Do' before the next hurricane hits. Things I didn't even think about, like not being able to get ice.
We ourselves, and our neighborhood in general, took a light beating in comparison to other neighborhoods. A lot of people had roof damage, fences down, trees down etc. Our street was flooded the morning after Ike hit. But, after removing some debris from the drains, the water receded very quickly.
It is crazy to drive through some of the neighborhoods and see piles of sawed up trees and trees branches up to like 8 feet tall.
Brady has been spending a lot of time helping people clear fallen trees from their yards and off their houses. Today a group helped some people from church repair their fence. They are continuing to organize groups to go out to other wards in our Stake to help people whose homes have flooded and who still have trees and other messes to clean up.
Brady's office suffered tremendous damage. He will be working from home for a while.
Over all, things are getting better. Slowly more and more people are getting power back. In our ward, we have been helping each other out by having people with power open their homes to those still with out it for things like warm showers and laundry. We had a generator for a day that President Hansen, the mission President, and his wife brought over to us one morning, which was a life saver!!! And then we got our power back!! The whole street went nuts with joy. Everyone is just doing their best to help out and take care of each other. It is so nice.
The lakes in our neighborhood all got rather full. If you go our friends blog, Michael and Melissa, they have more pics of the flooding and stuff. Just click on their name under my family and friends list.
Another thing that has been really cool, is our stake has a network of HAM Radio operators. So, the wards have been able to report to each other and pass along info. that would have been difficult to get around with power out and cell phones down. This has been a good learning experience for them and I am sure they will be even more prepared for the next natural disaster. Or any disaster at that. Brady has his license and has been a part of it. We are looking into getting him a better radio since he just has a hand held one and sometimes he can't reach as far as he'd like.


Our street the morning after the hurricane.......flood waters almost up tho the side walk.

Look at the house across the street from us.......both of their little trees blew over, as did a lot of the little trees on our block. Ours never made it all the way down. Man, I am glad they were just baby trees that fell. We were all really lucky. Especially to not even have any other damage than this and most people lost food from the freezer and fridge.

Just one example of a huge old tree that blew over in one of the neighborhoods. The chainsaw gangs take care of these messes.

more trees...........

The missionaries have been out in their yellow shirts cleaning up and helping out all over the place. This is President Hansen and one of the Elders. They are helping clear trees from this phone line, or power line, whichever it is. Way to go missionaries!!!

The Birthday Continues........

I am pretty sure Wesley is going to grow up thinking his birthday lasts from August to December. He is still getting packages and cards in the mail and loves it! Last week we got a fun package from Grandma Tingey with a flying pig, jelly beans, new clothes, and other fun stuff. Aubrey got some darling little shoes. I showed her the shoes and she said, "oh cute foo's!". She got some other cute clothes as well. I didn't get pics of them opening that package. My camera has been "misplaced". I just found it today!! Hooray!!
Today, he got a package from Grandad and Granny Ann and a nice card with money in it from his Great-Grandma Bills. Thanks guys!!!


You may remember a previous post about Wesley and how he loved the gumball machine at his Grandad's house. He always hoped for a green gumball, which to our amazement, he almost always got lucky and got one. Anyway, he received his birthday package from Granny Ann and Grandad today and in it, he got a bag of green gum balls!! Cool! And he even offered to share them with Aubrey.

Aubrey enjoying her green gumball.

Wesley got some other fun things in his package; Another Thomas train, some candy, crayons, balloons, a notebook. Aubrey got a bag of candy also, but she doesn't know about it yet. I will give it to her piece by piece over the next few weeks. She will be thrilled.

Dad was cool enough to blow up all of the balloons for Wesley and Aubrey to play with. So far, only one has popped.

Okay, this is really random, but I had to show y'all what I am learning! My friend, Melissa, came over and showed me how to do some crocheting. So, I am attempting my first baby blanket. It has been slow coming, but has been so fun to do and learn. It is nice while I am just lying around to have something to work on, that at this point, doesn't take much brain power and I still have something to show for it. I struggled at first, but with practice, I am feeling much more confident. I am excited to learn more and hope to be able to find the pattern for the fun little purses my grandma bills made for my sisters and I when we were little girls, so I can make one for Aubrey. They were so neat. They folded down into a cradle, and we all had little cupi (however you spell that) dolls to carry around in them.
Wesley asked me what I was making the other day, and I told him a blanket and he said, "Wow! Cool blank mom!". So cute.

Music

Apparently Wesley is a Billy Joel fan. He also likes Billy Idol's 'Mony Mony'. He was really frustrated at his dad last night; We went to Sonic for drinks and he wanted to listen to 80's rock, he said. So, dad turned it to the station and he got mad and said, "No! Not this one!". So Brady asked if he wanted 50's Rock. He said yes. So, once again the station was changed and Wesley got upset and yelled No. He said, "I want 'yeah yeah yeah'." And then it clicked and Brady started to laugh. He wanted to hear 'Mony Mony'. So, we came home and put it on our play list, along with a couple of Wesley's other request; 'For the Longest Time' by Billy Joel. And then Wesley and Aubrey had some fun dancing and singing before bed. It cracks us up to watch him go around the house singing "yeah, yeah, yeah..." Both of our kids really enjoy music and have a good ear for it. Aubrey is great at memorizing tunes and then humming and singing them for us later. So cute.

Just Stuff

Aubrey holding a horny toad when we were in Blanding. I don't know if that is what they are really called, but that is what my sisters and I have always called them. She really wanted to hold it, but when Aunt Nichole gave it to her, she wasn't so sure about it.

It is September! Debbie must have slept August away 'cuz it is no more than a blurr. Brady has been a trooper taking care of EVERYTHING from feeding Debbie (which is no easy task since the baby seems to be very picky) to mopping floors, bathing kids, and every other little detail it takes to run a household. He is our hero!!!

Wesley is enjoying all the PBS time he is getting in. He is also having a blast playing games. He loves to play Hungry Hippos, Sorry, Rummikub, and any other game containing small pawns and pieces that he can use as ammunition for cannons, make believe they are men flying in helicopters and bombing sharks, etc. He has quite the imagination.

Aubrey is doing well on the potty. Although I must confess, I did a big no no and put a diaper back on her off and on for a few days. But, in my defense, it was because she had the runs and we just can't do those kind of messes right now. The novelty has worn off some; I now have to remind and ask frequently if she needs to go potty. But she tells me yes or no. We have had 3 accidents, which isn't bad at all. So, we are pleased with her progress and so is she.