Laney De McBride

Laney De McBride was born on 8/8/08 so she is a very lucky baby. We are so glad to have her in our family. She is so beautiful and we love her. She was born in Poway, California. Laney weighed 7 lbs. 7 oz. and she was 19 1/2 in. long with a full head of dark beautiful hair. we love being parents of 2 they are alot of fun. Erik is a wonderful big brother he loves to give her kisses and he shares his favorite toys with her.

We will get caught up with our pictures soon I promise.

Update on Hurricane Gustav

Well, we are safe. Hurricane Gustav was wild and made us a little nervous throughout the day on Monday. There were times when the wind was blowing so hard we were worried trees were going to fall on our house. So we all stayed in our back room away from windows. Power went out before Noon on Monday and is still off.

After the storm started to die down, we spent the evening in our exremely hot and humid house and didn't sleep much. It was too hot to wrap Laney in a blanket, and she woke up every half hour or so. On Tuesday morning we surveyed the damage in our yard and neighborhood. We had a lot off branches down and had a few trees fall in our yard. Fortunately they fell on the fences in our backyard. The neighborhood didn't fare so well. Trees were blocking the road and power lines were down all over the place. It became very clear to us that when people were talking about power being off for a week or so, they weren't exagerating. The power company says it will be several days before they can even have an estimate of when power will return.

So, we decided to leave town until LSU reopened or power came back on (whichever comes first). LSU is closed until at least next Monday. We'll hopefully be back before then. The only people we know not also affected by the storm is Lindsay's cousin and his family in Houston. So we made a 4 1/2 hour drive over to Texas and, alas, we have electricity and internet enough to update our blog for all y'all (and yes, people in the south do say "all ya'll" as if "y'all" wasn't already plural).

So we are safe. Erik is happy because Lindsay's cousin John has a dog and twin daughters aged 3 1/2. He's having a blast.

We love our home and our new hometown, and are anxious to get back and hope this is the last of the hurricanes for this season.

Preparing for Hurricane Gustav!

Hey, all. We haven't updated our blog for a little while and there are some important events that have occurred in the past month we want to share with y'all (including moving to Baton Rouge, LA). But those will wait for a little bit longer.

In case some of you were wondering, we are scheduled to receive a category 3-4 hurricane late tonight or tomorrow morning. Its supposed to be a pretty intense storm. We are about as prepared as we can be at this point. We have plenty of water, a good amount of food stored and means to cook it in the event of the power going out for several days (which we are being told is very likely). We will tape up our windows (plywood is more protective, but we dont have any). But if you tape asterisks on the window panes with masking tape, if the window breaks, the glass will at least stay together and not shatter leaving the interior of the house exposed to the storm. We have also filled our bathtub with water so that we can continue to use our toilets when/if the water goes out.

The front yard of our house has two very large trees and Erik's room is on that side of the house. So we will be camping out in our far back room as far away from potentially fallen limbs/trees for safety. Its a good thing we like each other, especially since we'll be spending so much time together over the next few days in close quarters.

School has been cancelled for Tuesday and potentially longer. We have not been ordered to evacuate at this time and are not expecting to. We would only go if the evacuation order was mandatory, but really dont know where we would go. Probably up North into Mississippi or something. If we have electricity, we will try to post updates on our blog.

Wish us luck!

Animals

Erik loves animals. Erik especially loves cats, but most run away from him. However, this Memorial Day weekend, my parents were taking care of a really tiny kitten until they found a home for it (which they did). This kitten did not know any better and was more than happy to play on Erik and Erik was more than happy to have the cat play on him.

Below are a couple pictures of Erik's most recent adventure to Sea World (the third in his 21 months of life).

Erik awoke from his nap to find the killer whales right in front of him. He began jabbering and talking, and only stopped for a brief moment to yawn, as seen below.

Baby Shower for L-Word

Lindsay's friends Lindsay, Kim and Ashley threw a rocking baby shower for her. She got presents and stuff. She liked them soooooooooooooo much (each extra 'o' added to 'so' is intended to represent an exponential increase in Lindsay's enjoyment of this occasion). See below pictures, if you will.


Gifts and stuff.

Lindsay's mother and my mother.

Lindsay and Kim have due dates just days apart each expecting baby girls.

Lindsay, Lindsay and Ashley.

The Flower Fields in April

In April, Lindsay's aunt Dale brought Lindsay, Erik and I to the Flower Fields in Carlsbad, CA. Erik fell asleep, as seen below (kind of like Dorothy and Toto in the Wizard of Oz when they ran through a field of flowers, but not really).


Aunt Dale and myself.

Get a load of all these flowers in more than one color. In person, they were also in more than one color.

Lindsay and I love each other even more when we roam fields filled with flowers.

Good News!!!!

Hey everyone!! Today we found out that we are going to have a little girl! We are so excited!!
we love you all.