Preparing for Hurricane Gustav

For the past few days we have been getting things prepared to endure Hurricane Gustav. We have bought lots of snack food, water, batteries, etc. I figured if nothing else everyone could survive on junk food for several days. Here are some pictures of how we got the outside of the house prepared. We tried to get rid of all potential projectiles.

These are our wrought iron patio chairs tied to our swing set.

Our soccer goal and fort are tied up to the swing set.

This is the inside of our storage room that is full of all of the loose outside toy and bikes.

Another view of the storage room filled will our storage bins full of toys (outside toy boxes) and water.

This shows some of our plants also being stored in the storage room. The plants just started a resurgence in growth especially the bell peppers.

We put our basketball goal down to keep it from flying. It is also propped against our fence. This happens to be the side of the fence which fell down during Hurricane Katrina.

We turned our wrought iron patio table upside down and against the fence because it was turned over during Katrina.

See this tree. It was uprooted during Katrina but we were able to pick it back up and support it for a while and it rooted back in the ground.

We decided to tie it up to the swing set and fence to try to reinforce it for the storm. Will it survive?? If we have damage, I will do another entry on the after of Gustav.

Swimming Fun

Tuesday night we went to the YMCA for the children to swim and play. I feed Sarah and watched while everyone swam. They had a lot of fun. It will come to an end very shortly since we canceled our membership. We just keep it up during the Summer so that they can learn to swim and practice. The outside pool is only opened on Saturday now which only leaves the indoor pool available. They keep that pool temp. cooler for "swimmers" so it feels cooler than the outside pool. Also, if it rains or is lightning you can't swim in the indoor pool because they did not ground it when they built it last year. Seems like an awful lot of money to spend on a pool and not ground it so that it can be used at all times.

This is Ian swimming!

Princess Emma having a blast!

Cade and Emma (Cade was watching Emma while Rob was taking pictures of the other children and I was nursing Sarah! Don't worry because the water was only 1 1/2 feet deep. Emma could stand up by herself and was close to the life guard.)

Cai was on a mission for the diving stick.

Abram was having a great time!

This is Tate underwater retrieving a diving stick.

This is Tate coming up to the top.

Tate showing us the diving stick that he successfully retrieved from the bottom of the pool.

Ian

It's a Boy!

Russell Smith

7 lbs 9.6 ozs

19 in. long

Congratulations to Sarah and Collin on the birth of their first son! He will be greeted at home by his two sisters, Claire and Evangeline. He was born yesterday evening. This will be an exciting time as the family adjust to having a little boy instead of all girls now.

This was an exciting time for me since I had the privilege of being with them when he was born. I love watching the wonders of our Lord through child birth. What an Awesome God we serve! It was also special because I had the privilege of being there when their daughter, Evangeline, was born just two years ago.

This is Sarah not to long after arriving to the hospital. She was very excited to find out that she was already 8 cm. dilated. She actually kept her smile until right before she started to push. Sarah, you did a great job.
This is Russell right after being born. This was me standing up behind the bed looking over Sarah's head. He wasn't sure what just happened to him!

Here is the proud momma with her new son. Doesn't she look happy!

Here is the proud papa with his son!

Welcome Russell Smith!

I'm trying to play around with this blog site to see if it is user friendly. I have a xanga site but it has advertisements on it in order to have a free account. You can pay to take the ads off but I wanted to try another site before I paid for that one. So far, I am figuring my way around this one so I might be switching over to blogger!

Check out my other blog at www.xanga.com/amyshelby!

Sarah rolls....

Today we confirmed that Sarah is now a roller. She rolled from her back to her tummy. We thought had started doing it but wasn't sure since she has a sister and a few brothers who like to roll her themselves. Emma was in her bed napping, the boys were around the counter working on their creation booklets, and Sarah was on her mat rolling. She actually started rolling from her tummy as well today.