Happy Thanksgiving!

Not much to post this Thanksgiving eve. Certainly we are thankful, everyday, not just one day. Thought I'd post a few recent pics from our trip to Forney and Norman.

Aaron, Noah, & Pawpaw With his Mimi


He loves to be outside. He helped dadda and pawpaw plant flowers.


We were there! Most exciting.

He sure is getting big these days.

Back Home From the North

I left home at 5 am on Friday to head north, where its cold. Picked Kim up at Love field and headed to Forney to see Noah and his parents. We spent the night there, were able to enjoy Noah's 2nd birthday party along with my folks and Kim's before heading further north to Norman. We bundled up warm and enjoyed perhaps the most fun college football game I've ever been to. It was truly unforgettable the way the Sooners manhandled Tech. Following the game we drove down to Duncan and spent the night there with my folks, went to church with them, at some lunch and then headed back to Forney, for another visit with Noah and company. We spent the night there and headed back south this morning. Went through a cold front on our way north, like to froze towards the end of the OU game. We woke up Sunday to much warmer weather. By the time we got up this morning in Forney another cold spell had come in. On the way to H-town we drove from the cool back into the warm. I'm sure it will be here sometime.

Boomer Sooner baby!
de

For Your Holiday Viewing Pleasure!

Saw this on my neice's blog and couldn't resist.

Winding Down, Finally

Construction is finally beginning to wind down at the El-house. We began in earnest to really start cleaning up the construction stuff that has been stored in our living area, hammers, pry bars, tools, painting utensils, dropcloths, etc. There was no use in removing it to the garage until we didn't much need it anymore. We put new siding on the 2nd story on one side of the house. It took a beating when the roof flew off. The new countertop for the new cabinet arrives on Monday morning. All 8 rugs, rugs came back from being cleaned last night. Who knew we had that many rugs? Painting is 97% complete. I think there's always some painting to do, lots of little touch up here and there. One color would be so much easier but its not nearly as good looking as the contrasting colors we have so that takes a lot more time. All that's left is the rest of the Pergo floor. The insurance only replaced the damaged part so that's all we took up, until we got ready to put down the new floor we ordered. Looks wise its an exact match but not the locking, snapping part. Pergo conveniently changed the way it went together so it didn't match. All we could do was put down what we had and order more, so that's what we did. Lights and ceiling fan went up. All pretty exciting to get things back to normal. Time Christmas comes, hopefully we'll be 100% redone and you'll never know anything happened and it will all be new.

As frustatingly slow and dirty as it has been, I realize just how blessed we are to be at this point already. Our church building has yet to see a new piece of sheetrock or any kind of progress yet. Seems we still have a bit of mold that has to be taken care of and nothing can be started until then. On my way to the office a huge truck was pulling on to Post Oak with a full load of roofing materials for one of my neighbors. Many, many folks still are living with blue tarps and can't get a roofer to sneeze at them, much less a contractor who'll go to work reasonably. Many on South Burnet are waiting for someone to come and bulldoze the house they used to live in.

I spent some time on Tuesday helping my retired neighbor put some shingles on his roof. He's about 75 and I spotted him standing on an 8' step ladder working on it and just couldn't resist. His wife was standing nervously on the ground, watching his every move, much like my mom would be doing if Poppie were doing the same thing. She does her best to keep him from doing that kind of stuff these days. Its really for the younger crowd. So, I grabbed my hammer and headed over to help. Truth is, I'm thankful and not just because its Thanksgiving, but because I'm so blessed. It's easy to get bogged down in your own stuff until you step back, see others situations, and realize just how blessed you are.

Headed today to Forney to see my little Noah on his 2nd birthday, then to Norman, then Duncan, back to Forney, and finally home.

Boomer Sooner,
de

Waiting for the Weekend!

Not all that much new to post here in H-town. The H-town heat finally broke for this year and we're really enjoying cooler, drier fall like weather. Got down into the upper 30's a night or two. Still haven't turned on the heat yet. Kami and James were in town this past week for the Gulf Coast Spiritual Growth Workshop. James was one of the speakers so he got a free plane ticket to come south. I hated that our house is still in mid-construction but it was great to have them home even if just for a couple of days.

Kim and I are headed to Forney this weekend. I took a Sunday off, one of my four allowed Sunday's off, and going to Noah's birthday party on Saturday. He'll be two on Friday but the big party is Saturday. He's growing so fast its just incredible. Aaron calls me last night to tell me that Noah wants to talk to his PawPaw, so its upstairs to the computer I run to talk to my favorite grandson on skype. He can't really a lot of words that you can clearly understand and he does ramble a full sentence from time to time...but he can say PawPaw really good. He wanted to know where Mimi was...I tried to explain she was off working. Can't wait to see the little booger on Friday. Maybe I can take him fishing again if the suns out.

Saturday, after the party,we're headed to Norman for the OU/Tech game. Yes, we had season tickets this year but haven't gone to a home game yet. Something about a storm named Ike and funds a bit tight this year, anyway we kept the Tech game. Sure glad we did. Looks like a good one.

The house continues on. Since we ran out of floor Doug is working on some other stuff right now. Replacing some siding on one side of the house. New countertop is coming Monday. Put the lights back up, hang the cabinet doors, some trim here and there, lots of misc stuff to do. Hopefully the rest of the floor will come this week. When that's done I'm going to cut him loose for awhile.

Oh yeah, Mickey Mouse is 80 today. Makes me feel old. Strangest thing though, Mickey doesn't look a day older.

Have a good day ya'll,
de

Paw Paw part duex

Kim and I are going to be grandparents again! How exciting. Aaron and Allison are expecting another addition to their little family. Lord willing and all goes well, next June another little Ellis will come into the world. And in the mean time we'll be practicing our ever improving grandparenting skills like "spoil em and give em back to mom & dad," "buy em terrible noise making things," "feed em candy right before bedtime," and "never tell em no," well you get the idea. Not really. We just pray for another healthy child to love, "and many more" as the birthday song goes. Mostly as the Lord wills.

That's today big announcement. Couldn't tell yesterday till Aaron told his sister. Almost messed that one up.

de

Wow, Busy Week!

Things are moving right along at the Ellis' household. It would probably go faster on our remodeling if we stayed home on the weekend and did all we could do. Instead we attend the Sterling HS football game, the A&M/OU game, and unfortunately, the Texans game. Two of 3 ain't bad though. This is our 3rd house remodel in about 5 years. We did the house on Honeysuckle less than a year before we bought the house on the bay and did that one. (We didn't know we were moving when we did)

Now with the help of hurricane Ike, we get to do this one again. I say we, as if we are actually doing the work. I have been helping, which I really like to do as much as I can. Jared, I, and some others tore out all the stuff that needed to be removed. That was big and nasty. We helped to put in insulation, sheetrock, finish, and texture the sheetrock. Kim and I have done all the painting. That's certainly only a portion of what goes on but hopefully it saves us some funds and moves things along a bit faster so Doug, our friend and contractor, can concentrate on carpentry, which he does best. I like doing the painting and consider myself an excellent painter. I had a summer job once working for a local contractor and we did a lot of painting that summer. Always been pretty good with my hands. Looks like we may start on the floor tomorrow or the next day. Inside work, that's all that's left. We have to replace about 400 sq ft of pergo and some of the slate tile that got messed up. Then we'll go outside to replace some siding. Moving right along and we'll be glad.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a very exciting announcement!

de

Taking Time to Process

It'll take some time to sort things out after last nights historic presidential election. Truth is John McCain or any Republican had a better chance of a snowman surviving the Texas heat than they did trying to win this election in our current mess. Blame it on who you will, Bush, Wall street, Iraq, the economy or Bush, but Obama's win signals one of the greatest changes this United States has ever seen, the first black President. I was not certain I'd ever see that in my lifetime. Hey, I'm truly for the best qualified person to win no matter the color or gender. I'm still fairly certain Obama's wasn't the most qualified of the two but nevertheless the younger generations, blacks, hispanics, asians, and many other groups saw him as the chance to be the real agent of change for our country. He's headed straight on into a "good ole boys mostly white male" dominated culture that has existed for 200+ years. I hope he can bring them together to for Amerian like he claims he will do. I seem to recall that being one of W's great qualities, bringing both sides together. Didn't happen. Only got worse. I'm not totally pessimistic. I will always be a patriotic American. I love our country. I'm not thrilled about a lot of what it has become. Maybe this is a sign that everyone must stand up for what they believe in and be willing to do something about it. Many people did, for the first time and it has changed our country. I pray it will all be for the better. I know God was in control yesterday, today, and from now on. That's what I count on the most.

I'll close with what John McCain said in his concession speech:

And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties, but to believe, always, in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.

de

Not in the TV Picture!

Turns out my excitement about being on TV during the TNT broadcast of the Rockets/Mavs game...just didn't pan out. We did sit on the floor, right where I thought we'd sit. About the time we got to our seats in walked Mark Cuban and stood 5 feet from us, for 10 minutes, smiling, greeting folks, shaking hands. (I didn't offer to shake his hand) Not that I dislike him or anything. That was an exciting start though. What happened was we sat opposite the side the cameras shoot pretty much the entire game. The cameras sit on one side and shoot across the court towards the bench side of the floor. We sat on the same side as the cameras so the only time I made it on camera was briefly in the 3rd quarter when an end shot of the floor came up and we could see my rocket red shirt and bright yellow cap amongst the sea of blue.

It was great fun though, watching the Rockets pull away in the 4th much to the dismay of the entire crowd. There were probably less than 200 Rockets fans there. I sat the closest of any that I saw. Midway through the 3rd quarter the Mavs fans sitting behind me started pelting me with peanuts every time I stood up to root for the Rockets, which was pretty often. It was great fun. They were good natured about it and I wasn't terribly annoying, at least I tried not to be. Not sure Kim would agree.

Then we went to Aaron's to spend a couple nights with them and enjoyed Halloween with Noah and his cousins. They dressed up as the scarecrow (Noah), tin man, lion, and Dorothy and were a hit everywhere they went. Even had Toto, or Chester as he's normally known for awhile. It was a perfect night for trick or treating. I got to take Noah fishing his first time on Friday morning. He loved the fish but didn't want to touch it. It was great fun. I'll try to post some pics later. Would've been a perfect weekend had the Texans pulled out their win. Rockets, Sooners, Tech, Texans. Well, 3 of 4 is pretty darned good.

Oh yeah, got my insurance check. Now all I gotta do is figure out how to get my mortgage company to endorse it, so I can spend it.

later, de