Happy Halloween




This is my favorite picture ever (well, so far anyway)

Back Home

We returned home safely to find everything in tact except all our food from the deep freeze and refrigerator. Thankfully, I had not done my once a month cooking last month. Loosing that many meals could have sent me over the edge. Even though we are all alright I think a lot of people suffered from some strange Hurricane syndrome, including me. It seemed like it took forever to get back into the swing of things. Our parents fared about the same with only minor damage to their roofs. Everyone I have talked to in the Lake Charles area says it looks like a war zone there. Trees down everywhere. We think it was no coincidence though that not one tree fell on my parent's street. Right before we all evacuated one mom's neighbors told us that they were not evaucating and that she and her mom had walked their street and prayed over all the houses and people living in them. The power of prayer.

Here go the Wallings AGAIN

Well we've been here less than12 hours and now we're about to hit the road again. The officials have called for a mandatory evacuation for Calcasieu parish. We are going to some relatives house in North Louisiana. It looks like the storm has turned more to the East. It's a minute by minute decision. But with the direction of the storm Westlake will likely get a beating.
I'll post more later. Please keep in touch. I can check my regular email until the storm or my yahoo is sew4me1973@yahoo.com

Here comes Rita and here go the Wallings

We debated and contemplated and thought and tried to decide whether or not to evacuate. We don't live in a mandatory evacuation zone but where Rita is projected to hit, Kingwood would get a majority of the eastern wall. My neighborhood shouldn't get a lot of severe damage but the thought of no air conditioner for 5 days or longer isn't exactly appealing. So after a lot of thought we headed to Westlake, LA to be with family. Not exactly north but unless the storm makes a severe shift we should be safe here. If there would be a shift we would want to be here with our family to make sure everyone got out safely anyway.
The trip over went much smoother than we expected. There were a lot of people on the road but the traffic was really moving. I had been watching the news in Houston all day and the helicopter kept showing the North bound interstates. They were bumper to bumper and going no where fast. I heard someone say a trip from Houston to Dallas which normally takes about 5 hours was taking 18 hours. But it is such a good thing that so many people are actually listening and evacuating. There weren't a lot of die hards on the news saying "we're just going to ride it out"
When we got to Lake Charles there was a huge sign on the interstate that was directing evacuees north. The sign said NO lodging in Lafayette or Baton Rouge.
So here we are with our precious belongings, All 4 of them.(and the scrapbooks)

Pig Tails

It's a proud day when a Mom can get her baby's hair into 2 individual pig tails. Well maybe I shouldn't be so proud but she sure looked cute with her "antennaes up." I have a feeling if her hair had not been cut so short in June we would be looking at shoulder length pig tails. I had thought Kaylee's hair grew fast but Mia has her beat.

Feeding the Dolphins

Sea World Vacation

Whales and dolphins and sea lions.... Oh My! We had a great vacation at Sea World San Antonio. We spent 2 full days at Sea World. The first day we stayed from 10 - 5 and the second day we spent from 10 - 9. I really recommend the 2 day pass. With show schedules it's hard to do it all on one day. Mia napped in her stroller for a few hours each day and was ready to go the rest of the day. This was our first family vacation as a family of 6. It was a lot of fun and the only growing pain we felt was buying lunch and dinner in the park. They don't allow any food or drinks to be brought in the park. We just tried to think "we're on vacation, things cost more."
We really recommend Sea World. It gets an A+ in our book even with the food prices. They have a waterpark built into the park so there was something for everyone and when you get hot you can go cool off in the lazy river or try a tube shoot. At one point, I went to ride a body slide with Zane and he and I could see the lazy river from our line up high. We looked down and saw David riding a tube with Mia, Trent and Kaylee all in with him. He was quite easy to spot with all the orange lifejackets they were wearing.
One of our favorite events was feeding the dolphins. We purchased trays of little fish and they showed us how to hold the fish out and the dolphin would come up and you can pet them first then release the fish into his mouth. It was really neat for the kids (and me) to get to touch the dolphins.
We couldn't get that close to the San Marcos outlet mall without stopping in for a visit. We picked up a few new school clothes for Zane and some matching outfits for Kaylee and Mia at Children's Place. My favorite store there is the House of Hatten outlet. They have smocked dresses and boys outfits. I was so sad to find out the store(only one in the country) is closing. Mr. Hatten is retiring and they are closing shop. I have really gotten good deals there in the past. We were there on the week before Texas's tax free weekend. With the amount of people there on a Wednesday I cannot imagine what the weekend was like. Some of the stores were staying open 24 hours all weekend. WOW!

Aren't I cute? 

He's a real little boy now.... 

Mmmmmm! good cake 

Mia's 1st Birthday 

Settling In

I think we may be through our adjustment period. We all seem to be on a normal sleep schedule. Everyone loves their new sister and enjoy playing with her. We went to Westlake and had a small 1st birthday party for Mia.
Our church family and friends threw us a welcome home party. It was such a special evening for us. Everyone got to meet Mia and many of the gentlemen got to hold her. (still favors men over women) We were so happy to show her off. I put the pictures Shannon Richards took for us in an Ofoto folder.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?&collid=673869656203&page=1&sort_order=0

Walling Crew in Red, White and Blue 

Future MSU Cowboy 

pictures by Blair Blanks www.blairblanks.com 

Mia - one year old 

July 1, 2005 

Pool, Pictures, and unPacking

Everything is getting a little easier around the house. David is back from Philadelphia and I really miss him when he's gone. Not that I miss his wise cracks and constant jabs but I miss his HELP. I don't know how single mothers function. Mia is doing much better with her sleep. She only woke up once last night around 3:30. I am over my jet lag and have almost finished unpacking. I had to unpack all of us plus all the kids' suitcases as well. Plus do our laundry for 2 weeks. Finishing that today was a huge relief.
We took Mia to the pool tonight. Since she came to us she has been deathly afraid of water. In China we could not even take her into the bathroom without her crying. At first we thought it was because she didn't feel well and the fever. But, after time we realized she Hated the water. Bath time was becoming very dangerous. She would not sit in the tub or sink, she would arch her back out straight and scream as loud as possible. I was so afraid she would hit her head on the marble or faucet. Plus being all soaped up it was hard to keep both hands on her.
One of the other mothers on the trip told me yesterday that her daughter was afraid as well. But they took her to the pool and she had a great time playing and now bath time is much better.
So, I waited until the favored parent came home and we took her this evening. She fussed a little at first but very quickly warmed up. In fact she was not just tolerating the water she was loving it. We took the baby boat/innertube and she just beamed when she started floating in it. (I ran out to get the camera but had forgotten my purse at home, I'll try to get one later) She splashed and played for about 2 hours without any more whimpering. Only being upset when we took her out for the night.
This was another huge relief today. Because 80% of our summer entertainment revolves around the pool and boat. I had been worried about how I was going to work this out.
We also had our 1 year old photo shoot this morning with Blair. She didn't like the sitting alone very much but I think the pictures came out wonderfully.
Blair's other work is on her web-site www.blairblanks.com. I am so fortunate to have a great friend and neighbor with such amazing talent.

adjusting at home

David and I really never considered the fact Mia would have Jet Lag. We knew we would but had planned to help each other out and sleep when we could. However, we've had more trouble getting Mia's schedule back on track than our own. Last night she did pretty well. Finally going down for the last time at 11:00. Even though she went to sleep at 7:00 and woke up about 4 time in between. We think this is being aggrivated though by a tooth coming in on the top.
Other than our sleep issues she has adjusted very well. She will let the kids hold her and feed her with no problems. She is content playing on the floor or in our lap.
She will let Zane carry her to and from places.
There are a few other pictures I didn't get to post. So, I loaded them on to OFOTO. If you would like to view them they are here.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?&collid=345201826203
There are some intresting ones from a Cantonese restaurant we went to. You literally pick out what you want for dinner from the tanks in front.
There is a saying that they will eat anything with 4 legs except the table. I believe it. We stayed on the cautious side but some in our group got more adventurous with fish head stew, snake, etc.

Mia loves to swing