Monday, August 30, 2010
Meet the Sharks!
Well...it's officially soccer season here once again at the Frame household. Tonight was our second practice and the kids all decided on our team name...The Sharks. This season will bring with it several changes for our team. First off...we'll be playing with goalies for the first time. We'll also have referees for the first time, and we'll be "keeping score" for the first time. Even our roster has grown (from 9 to 12.) Lots of changes. Anyway, Ben is excited to be playing once again, and I'll be coaching again. Also, half of the team are returning players from our spring team...so we'll have lots of familiar faces.
Looking Back At Katrina
As most of you know it was 5 years ago this week that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. I thought I'd pull out some old photos of that time in our lives. Ben was about 1 1/2 at the time. It's hard for me to remember him so little.
Here's a photo of Jackie and Judd when they came to visit us. This photo was taken about a week before the hurricane hit. That was when New Orleans was still New Orleans.
Here's a shot of Ben helping me out as we begin to pack some belongings to take with us during our Katrina evacuation. This was about 5 days before we left. Other than clothes we mainly ended up taking with us photographs.
These next shots are of Ben playing at the park. These were taken about 2 days before we left. I remember wanting to get my mind off of the storm. Yet despite everyone's worries most people figured the storm would pass to the east and miss the city. Things were still optimistic.
Here's Ben picking out which books to take with us.
Here we are in Texas spending time with family while the hurricane moves closer to New Orleans.
A week after Katrina I drove down to check out the neighborhood and the damages to our house. When I drove into our neighborhood I came across this sign at the end of our street. By the way, our neighborhood never experienced any vandalism or looting.
This was our house. By sheer luck our house and neighborhood experienced "tropical storm force winds," and not "hurricane force." Thanks to that our house came out great considering. We ended up having to replace the roof, and we lost a few trees, but the house inside was dry and the windows were intact. Like I said...we were lucky.
This was how our street looked a week after the storm. Like I said above...we all came out great considering. Most of these homes (including ours) were all back to 100% within a few months. What helped our neighborhood was the fact we weren't near any major canals that led to Lake Ponchatrain.
This is the neighborhood of Kenner, which was only 10 minutes east of us...and therefore 10 minutes closer to the eye of the storm. Kenner also experienced "tropical storm force winds" but they were also near a major canal that led to the lake. That canal ended up breaching and the water poured into these neighborhoods.
Lastly, some of you will remember Jenny and I had donations mailed to us from family and friends out of state...which we then delivered to relief centers around the city. Here was one of many carfuls.
Here's a photo of Jackie and Judd when they came to visit us. This photo was taken about a week before the hurricane hit. That was when New Orleans was still New Orleans.
Here's a shot of Ben helping me out as we begin to pack some belongings to take with us during our Katrina evacuation. This was about 5 days before we left. Other than clothes we mainly ended up taking with us photographs.
These next shots are of Ben playing at the park. These were taken about 2 days before we left. I remember wanting to get my mind off of the storm. Yet despite everyone's worries most people figured the storm would pass to the east and miss the city. Things were still optimistic.
Here's Ben picking out which books to take with us.
Here we are in Texas spending time with family while the hurricane moves closer to New Orleans.
A week after Katrina I drove down to check out the neighborhood and the damages to our house. When I drove into our neighborhood I came across this sign at the end of our street. By the way, our neighborhood never experienced any vandalism or looting.
This was our house. By sheer luck our house and neighborhood experienced "tropical storm force winds," and not "hurricane force." Thanks to that our house came out great considering. We ended up having to replace the roof, and we lost a few trees, but the house inside was dry and the windows were intact. Like I said...we were lucky.
This was how our street looked a week after the storm. Like I said above...we all came out great considering. Most of these homes (including ours) were all back to 100% within a few months. What helped our neighborhood was the fact we weren't near any major canals that led to Lake Ponchatrain.
This is the neighborhood of Kenner, which was only 10 minutes east of us...and therefore 10 minutes closer to the eye of the storm. Kenner also experienced "tropical storm force winds" but they were also near a major canal that led to the lake. That canal ended up breaching and the water poured into these neighborhoods.
Lastly, some of you will remember Jenny and I had donations mailed to us from family and friends out of state...which we then delivered to relief centers around the city. Here was one of many carfuls.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Day Camps
This week the kids have been attending day camps at the community center. Ben is doing a "Magic Camp," and Megan is doing a "Backyardigans Camp." Ben is learning lots of neat tricks that he likes to perform for us, and Megan is having fun doing crafts and playing games. This is the first camp Megan has ever done, so she is pretty excited this week.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Ben's Star Wars Weekend
Ben and I spent this afternoon working on his latest Lego...Darth Vader's ship. He actually got this for his birthday back in March along with a lot of other Lego sets, and we've been slowly spreading them out over the year. Yesterday I showed Ben "EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" for the first time (my favorite Star Wars film.) His eyes were glued to the screen. He loved it.
More Smore's Please!
Last night we went over to our friends the Manchesters and cooked smore's out in the backyard. Camping or no camping...is there ever a bad time for smore's?
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Carpe Diem!
Today was a gorgeous day. Sunny skies...mid 70's...nearly perfect. Jenny emailed me from work today and told me she was coming home a little early today and suggested we go for a bike ride since the weather was great. The kids are always up for a ride, so we went back to our new favorite biking spot...the bike trail at the nature center. We didn't see any wildlife tonight, but otherwise it was a perfect evening. Pretty soon school is going to start and the fall breezes will whip through the air. Got to squeeze out every bit of summer up here before it's too late. Carpe Diem....
Monday, August 16, 2010
Road Trip!
On Saturday Ben and I took a "Father & Son road trip" to Michigan's Adventure, which is an amusement park 3 hours west in the town of Muskegon (on the Lake Michigan side of the state.) We were there as part of a Cub Scout outing. Ben has been wanting to go to Michigan's Adventure for a while now, so it worked out perfectly that the pack was going there this summer. Ben also got to ride some rides with his friend Joey, who is also a Tiger Cub in the pack.
Ben had an absolute blast. He loved riding all the rides and roller coasters. The park also has a water park which Ben loved. Growing up in Arlington I spent many a day at Wet N' Wild, and Six Flags, but other than Disney World Ben really hasn't been exposed to amusement parks and water parks. Once he saw what a "wave pool" was all about I couldn't get him out of it. Anyway, we got home Saturday night around 11pm, but we had a great day. I swear, he was smiling all day long.
Ben had an absolute blast. He loved riding all the rides and roller coasters. The park also has a water park which Ben loved. Growing up in Arlington I spent many a day at Wet N' Wild, and Six Flags, but other than Disney World Ben really hasn't been exposed to amusement parks and water parks. Once he saw what a "wave pool" was all about I couldn't get him out of it. Anyway, we got home Saturday night around 11pm, but we had a great day. I swear, he was smiling all day long.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Our New Cottage
Jenny and I have always dreamed of purchasing a second home. We never thought our daughter would beat us to it.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Our Little Tiger Cub
This summer we signed Ben up for Cub Scouts. He doesn't "officially" start until September, but we've already done a few things with the scout pack at his school. Last night he got his new shirt and hat. Still got to get all the other things though. Anyway, he's really excited about getting started.
Our New Front Yard
About a month and a half ago we had our front yard redone. Originally we had lots of trees and a huge mulch bed that was too big to do anything with (15 yards of mulch to fill it in.) So we hired a company to come in and take out some of the mulch bed and replace it with more grass and smaller mulch beds. We also had some poplar trees taken out (which dropped a lot of branches anyway.) Also we had the wooden beams on the corner taken out and replaced with flagstone, and we also lined our small flower bed by the porch with flagstone. The new grass seeds are just now filling in so I thought I'd take some "after" pictures. The end result looks great. We've been getting lots of compliments from the neighbors. We're already getting ideas for "phase 2" next year. Anyway, it came out great.
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