Go Us!

Due to the aftermath and cleanup of Hurricane Ike, school has been out this past week and Paul has been working at home all week. We've had the opportunity to hang out at home quite a bit and have gotten a lot accomplished. Here's some of what we have done.

BOTH:
We went to my moms house and helped her clean out all the food from her freezers (the power was out for too long there) and checked out her lake house. Luckily neither home sustained any major damage, she just lost some food and her 30 year old freezer never came back on. Thursday night we went out on a date and tried a new Latin restaurant we had coupons for and rented some movies, Lars and the Real Girl and Juno. Both shows were....thought provoking. We enjoyed them, but thought they were "interesting."

JEN:
My mom is a great cook and she taught me well. I cook a lot and enjoy it (dishes are something else though!) After this storm I helped mom make 30+ jars of strawberry jam since the berries had been in her freezer and were now defrosted. YUMMM!!!
One thing my mom doesn't cook though, and therefore never taught me how to make, is bread. I checked out a book from the library called The Best Make Ahead Recipe which talks about foods you can make ahead of time and put in the fridge for a few days or in the freezer for a month and I decided to be brave and make some bread. The rolls never really rose, I don't think it got warm enough in my kitchen, but I kept trying and decided to make cinnamon rolls and they turned out pretty good. I was proud of myself for being brave and trying bread!

Paul:
Granted Katy TX wasn't hit as hard as east Houston, but there were still some trees down, fences blown over, and roof damage. Paul went out on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and helped folks clean up. He got to put his new chain saw to use. (purchased 3 years ago after hurrican Rita, just in case) One of the neighbors captured some pictures of him cutting down an uprooted oak tree in their backyard. There will be many weekends filled with 'work parties' going to east Houston to help clean out homes, and clean up debris.

Once we got the minivan we cleaned out one side of the garage to put it in, but we hadn't bought a garage door opener until last week. The garage was pre-wired for it (we are pretty sure the previous owners took the garage door openers with them when they left!) so we thought it would be easy to install. Paul got to use his circular saw, his dremmel tool and lots of other tools so he was pretty happy. We actually had a difficult time with the wiring because it wasn't labeled, but we finally got it done and we are SO happy! Now we just have to clean out the other half of the garage and HOPE we can fit Paul's car in. The garage is really quite small though, so with the workbench and bicycles and tools and such we aren't sure if it will fit or not.



Also, my computer which I purchased in 2000 finally went the way of all the earth. (Anyone know of any good electronic recycling programs?) We purchased a very inexpensive pc, and continue to use our old 17" monintor. Paul set it up and configured it with all the software we use and cleaned off all the garbage software that we don't. It's much faster and has much more capacity than my old computer. I hope it lasts me another 8 years.

Sexy Huh!