gracie's baptism 2011

 yes, i am aware that this event took place almost a year ago. no, i have no shame in posting it now.  i have been a slacker to the Nth degree with the blog and i have no valid excuses.   but here it is anyway, either for your enjoyment, just ours or both.  (i mean really, we all know this is basically for our own enjoyment half the time right?)

 grace looking so spectacular in her baptism dress.  the story behind the dress is that i accidentally ordered the wrong one! oops! but once this one came in the mail, she fell in love! so we were all good.

 preparing for the dunkage.

 all well and clean! dad only had to dunk this kid once.  i guess the third time really is the charm...

 with bishop watson (he's been the bishop for all of our girls' baptisms)

 with all of the fam that made it for her special day.  our family, grandma and grandpa, cousin zachary and uncle neal.

 with her bff kylee

 grandma and grandpa who came all the way from mississippi!

 with her silly sisters

 seriously want to eat them up! so gorgeous!

 cousin zachary and uncle neal came up from miami 

 daddy

 goofing off? no, not this group...

 being taken to prison by the warden...

 mom

 at home we snapped a few shots of the baptism girl

 grace just being grace

all in all it was a fantastic morning.  that is it. no more babies to be baptized.  goes too fast!  

after the baptism we had a rockin' good birthday party! those pics to come soon because, if i do say so myself, the person who put it together did a superb job!

happy belated sarah!

it's a bit late, but well, that's how i roll here in the blogosphere.  sarah celebrated her 14th birthday this month and it was pretty low key since it was just us and it was a sunday! she was showered by much love and plenty of presents by both her family and friends.  we even got a skype call in with her grandparents on their mission in chile! 

so for her celebration we chilled out and watched the olympics and the closing ceremonies and had brownies and ice cream! what more could a girl want right?

 chilaxing after church and opening presents.

 ooooo! a hunger games poster.  grace picked this one out especially for her. she was sooooo excited to get it for her.  she had been planning for months! 

 the piece de resistance! her very own flat iron in a union jack motif to boot! plus some cash! she is loaded now!!

 oh my! now she can style her hair a la britannia!

oh. my. gosh! 

stormy weather

well, back to school would not be complete here in south florida without a storm, or the threat of one.  this year we got a doozy! tropical storm isaac was not too bad to us, but not too kind either.  thankfully we did not get any damage to our house or cars, but some of our yard and many roads in our area did not fair as well. several others in the area got it so much worse than we did also.  it apparently was a 1 in 100 year storm! this august has been the wettest on record since they started keeping records back in the late 1800's!  

during the storm on monday

our poor street is under that water somewhere.  and still is today!

mauricio off to the rescue!

do you see that??? water to his knees!!

not as deep in the street, but still not fit for walking.

mauricio said the jeep asked him "is that all you got??" thank goodness for the jeep or we would still be housebound and calling for some supplies!!

a view down to the main road that our street is off of.  insane! it still looks this way today too.

so here we are still surrounded by the same amount of water.  i wonder if our property value will go up now that we own lakefront property? or maybe not because it looks more like bayou front property.  any day now we are going to start gator huntin'.  

a view of the other side of our street that leads to a canal that is now level with the road.  it's been weird to see boats go past our house. you did read that right. in. the. road. maybe we'll get the gondola out and start serenading the neighborhood...

our poor little mailbox...

we just got out yesterday, after being cooped up for several days. it was nice to see civilization again!! of course, our first stop was the library because we're nerdy like that and then off for the real reason we left — toilet paper! 

the only annoyance that we've had to deal with, besides the fact that we are surrounded by water, is that both sarah and gracie's schools have reopened, but we couldn't get them there yesterday! they did go today, but sarah's school is 30 min away and she is usually bused.  unfortunately, they are not running buses out here, for obvious reasons i suppose, so we are having to drive out there. (remember, we have a jeep.  getting out of the flooded driveway and street = great! gas mileage = horrible!) thankfully one of her best friends also attends the same school and offered to take her today and she usually gets dropped off closer to the house on tues and thursdays because of ballet. tomorrow, we will figure something out.  we are a day by day kinda family right now!!