Happy Birthday Aimee!

Happy Belated Birthday to my long-time friend Aimee! Sorry I missed it yesterday, but hope it was a fabulous day and spent with the ones you love.

Check out Aimee's blog in our links to the right by clicking on 'Houston Family'.

In honor of Aimee, I'd like to share some tidbits about our friendship that most of you don't know. (Okay Abbey, if you do know its b/c you have an unfair advantage!)

*Aimee gave me my first Jimmy Buffett CD for my 17th birthday.
*Aimee and I lived together in the dorms at Tech our freshman year, and after many years are friends again. Praise God for forgiveness and grace!
*Aimee writes amazing poetry and I still have some of her very early work.
*Aimee and I played the flute together from 5th through 11th grade, with one year of bass drums thrown in for good measure.
*Aimee has a kind heart that gives beyond its capacity. (oh, if you know Aimee, you already knew this one!)

Happy Birthday!

Holly's Belated Birthday Photos

I didn't have my birthday photos available back when we posted about my party, but here they are! Still didn't use my camera as much that day as I should have, so if you have any photos from the party, please send them to me!

Heather painted a portrait of Eli as a birthday gift to me. She had never met him, but used a photo off of our blog as her subject. She is remarkable! Thanks Heather Feather!

The food table before the food arrived. We had Dickie's barbecue: brisket, sausage, potato salad, cole slaw, beans, rolls and peach cobbler. Yum!

Holly about to cut the delicious cake. If you are able to enlarge this picture, please do so and check out the amount of chocolate detail! Divine! Abbey made the wreath on the cake table, along with placing feather decorations on each of the guest tables. It was a beautiful evening. Thanks all!

SpongeBob SquareFeet

Some of you may know that Eli has been changed over to a daycare from staying with our friend Abbey. Things were great with her, but it was time for a change due to the distance between our homes. She was quite gracious and supportive of the move and that is much appreciated!

Eli is doing great in his daycare, claps his little hands and smiles when he gets there in the mornings, goes to whoever has their hands out and doesn't cry when I leave. This makes a mother's heart proud. He has three teachers: Miss N, Miss U and Miss B.

Yesterday, Miss U asked me to think about getting some soft-soled shoes for Eli, b/c he's having a difficult time getting traction with his socks as he's trying to crawl. Side note, Eli does not crawl on hands and knees, but on forearms and full body, so he pushes off with his big toes. I understood the dilemma and actually had some adorable camouflage soft-soled shoes that velcro that my mom had given Eli. Well, this morning I got him dressed and was attempting to put the shoes on his squirming little feet when I noticed... what? His feet are too thick for the velcro straps to reach across and well, velcro. Hmmm.... Yes, my baby is SpongeBob SquareFeet and I blame my mother's side of the family. Thanks Nana, for both the shoes and your genes.

Oh, well. Who needs soft-soled shoes anyway? His big boy shoes are super cool, so we'll move to those soon enough.

The Next Generation

So it is official. We are starting a boy's soccer team for sure, now. Dan and Margo Angermiller have announced the adoption of two beautiful twin boys, Bryce and Seth. The amazing little miracles were born on 8/31. Bryce Lawrence was 4 lb 15 oz, 17.5 inches and Seth Daniel was 3 lb 5 oz, 16 inches. They were born at 34 weeks and are eating and doing well.

Dan and Margo have come a long, hard and difficult road to this day. It has been amazing to watch from afar and see their reliance on God and each other to get them to this day.

Congratulations Friends.

Corporate America

For this installment of Justin's "Catch This" we will laugh at Holly's employer. Holly works for the quintessential corporate America company. Really, you should ask her. They send out memos detailing what is acceptable for your "holiday season celebration". She attends hours of training built around a fictitious family on their journey through "insurance land" or something equally as quirky. They have a lady who gets really mad if you unplug your phone to move it on your desk. She WILL call you. If you want to move your monitor you need to call the central support desk and they will send a guy to do it.

However...

Today's installment takes the cake. Holly has recently started working from home. As part of this we were going to get a second line so that she could keep her "business" calls separate. I'll spare you the details, but the monthly cost of the phone line was not worth it compared to the ONE phone call she receives a month. The best part is that she received an email today confirming her sign up for a two hour training class on how to use her new phone that they shipped to our house.

TWO HOURS FRIENDS...
To learn how to use a phone. Seriously? This brings to mind several questions. First, how on earth could you not know how to use a phone. This isn't rocket science. It isn't the most up-to-date, solve the world's problems type of phone. It doesn't even ring if Batman calls. Second, who teaches this class and how do they have any sense of value whatsoever?

"What do you do you do for a living?"
"Oh I teach people how to use their office phones."
"Is that a difficult concept to grasp."
"Well you have to go over what to do in case Batman calls. After that it is pretty easy."
"Oh, thanks."

Besides the phone thing, it gets better. As part of coming home they shipped Holly a docking station for her laptop. They shipped a very expensive wide screen monitor. They shipped a new keyboard. Do you know what they didn't ship? A mouse. When she inquired of tech support why they didn't ship a mouse, they informed her that they didn't ship mice. She would have to drive to Richardson to pick it up.

Now wait. They would ship a $300+ monitor, a new docking station, even a keyboard but not a mouse? I was dumb founded. Of all the assets you want to ensure that a real person receives you care about a $10 mouse. I laughed for days.

So ship your TPS reports to Holly. Just be sure to use the correct cover page, lest you didn't get the memo...

Okay I will get you another copy of the memo.

I'm a big boy now!

Eli is sporting his very first set of big boy pajamas- separate shirt and pants, with no feet! Thanks Grandma, for sending them our way! This was also the first night that I found him sleeping with his little bottom stuck up in the air. Yep, I risked waking him to take pictures.
He didn't budge.

Guess who's crawling now? Justin is working on posting a video but is having technical difficulties. (Michelle, let us know if you figure yours out.) Eli doesn't yet understand 'no' so he crawls wherever he wants to and then cries for us to rescue him. For some reason, under this table seems to be his favorite spot to get trapped. He also did a fine job of dust-mopping behind the couch- crawled from one end to the other, stopping for a moment to play with the dust bunnies and then moving on to Mama waiting at the other end. Unfortunately we missed that on film.

We took Eli to the zoo over Labor Day weekend for his first time. We rode the Dart rail down to the Dallas Zoo, which wasn't extravagant but definitely close enough to home and easy enough for us to do in just a few hours. This is Justin and Eli at the Stingray Bay pool. You can actually pet the rays as they swim by. Eli missed out this time but Justin and I both did and they are amazingly smooth. We had a great time even though it was very hot!

Boys Boy Number Two, Three

Welcome to the world Armand G. Fondren III. Good job on really making your mom understand the concept of Labor Day! While Eli is Boys Boy number one, don't worry you are destined to spend your life confused on if you are number two or number three. And you will surely get whiplash as we call you Trey and that guy from Chicago Trey as well. Anyway. We are praying for you and are eager to meet you. Now go spit up on your dad!

Time: 1:33 am, 1 Sep 2008 (Labor Day)
Length: 21 1/2 inches long
Weight: 9 lbs 11 oz.
Name: Armand "TREY" Gene Fondren III

Visit the 'Armand' link on the side bar for pictures to be posted soon.