Everyday Surprises

On Monday, as I was mowing the yard to help Jeremy out since he was working on the pergola (which is almost finished with a first coat of paint and will hopefully be done in time for Lauren's birthday party next Saturday), I saw something dart out in front of the lawnmower. I immediately calmed down when I realized it was this (and not a snake):



Way cuter than a snake - let me expand on the story...

For those of you who know me, you know I don't do snakes. Period...ever. I can't stand the reptile house at the zoo, and I can't handle the thought of snakes at all. Last year, we were having company over one night, and I needed to make a quick run to the store to grab a couple of things for dinner. I loaded Lauren in the car seat and headed around to the driver's side of the truck when I heard a hissing noise. I was on the phone and told my friend I thought my tire must be leaking - until I looked back and realized there was a very large snake coiled up in my garage hissing and ready to strike. I quickly jumped in my truck and almost hyperventilated. I remember yelling into the phone that there was a snake in my garage to my friend. I called our local college in town to see if perhaps the biology department would be interested in this snake. They informed me that they were not in the snake catching business. So, I called my husband (who happened to be in a meeting with his boss). And I might have called one or two or four times with panic in my voice escalating with each phone call as I asked him when he was going to leave his meeting and come home to kill the snake so that Lauren and I could go back in the house. At this point, I'm terrified at the thought of opening the garage door and backing out in case I back over the darn thing. Which would of course solve my problem, but then I'd have to deal with the after-effects of running over something - which is also not fun. Jeremy told me he would take care of it when he got home, and I was flabbergasted. I could not believe he wouldn't run out of the meeting with his boss to come home and kill the snake while I was at the grocery store.


So, I went to the grocery store and got home - hoping that the snake was gone, but also hoping that if it was there, I could at least see where it was. Neither of those things happened, so I grabbed Lauren out of her car seat, and quickly ran into the house through the front door - almost hyperventilating again just thinking about the fact that there was a large snake in my garage.

Jeremy came home a few minutes later and had about given up on the snake still being in the garage because it wasn't out in plain sight when he got there. I immediately let him know that that was unacceptable, and everything was coming out of the garage so that we could find the snake. When we moved in, Jeremy built a nice workbench for himself on the left side of our garage. In the last 4 years, he has accumulated quite a collection of particle board and various wood pieces. I knew with every fiber in my being that the snake was hiding somewhere behind all of that wood. I wished him the best of luck, and went in to await the noise of a metal shovel hitting a concrete floor several times. A few minutes later, I heard that glorious noise, and I knew without a doubt that the snake was no more. I still have no idea what kind of snake it was - except that it was very very dark and about 3 and 1/2 to 4 feet long. And really, that was more than I ever wanted to know about the snake in the first place.

For weeks after that, I could not bring myself to walk anywhere close to the spot where the snake was or where the snake met its demise. I really was almost paralyzed with fear when I would think about it.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I was mowing, and I almost mowed over a 3 and 1/2 foot long snakeskin. Now, for those of you that really know me, you know there are very few times that I turn full on girly-girl. However, upon seeing the snakeskin, I immediately shut off the mower, screamed,"Oh sweet mercy," and ran screaming and arms flailing into the house. I really wish someone had been filming me, because I'm sure I would collapse into peals of laughter if I could see how stupid I looked. I'm giggling now just thinking about it. Anyway, I tell you this to say, I hate snakes...but I love bunnies ~ especially baby ones that live in our yard. Here's a picture of the mama in the rabbit hole:



Pretty cool huh? Lauren thinks it's really neat that we have baby rabbits living in our yard and even enjoyed leaving out some baby carrots for the baby rabbits - of which they ate a couple.

I leave you with a couple of sweet pictures of my almost 3 year old who is spending a few days with Mimi and Pappaw while Mommy and Daddy spend a few days trying to get some stuff finished up around the house (i.e. pergola) before this little one turns 3. Have a great weekend everyone!



And no, Lauren's not rocking the side ponytail 80's style...the other ponytail is just hidden by the camera angle and her noggin.

New Orleans

This is the post that I have been writing in my head for almost a week and a half now. Last week, Jeremy and I made our first trip back to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina hit. Needless to say, I was slightly nervous about taking Lauren with us, but I should have known God was taking care of us! We got off I-10 outside of Gautier, and traveled Highway 90 pretty much all the way to Louisiana. I know that that entire section of the Gulf Coast was hit really hard by the storm, and driving down the Beach Highway seeing multiple foundations and stairs that led nowhere, I was struck by how much history we lost in Katrina. Gorgeous homes that dated back over 100 years are gone completely now because of this storm. I also know, because of my family in South Alabama, that hurricanes are a part of life down there – kind of like tornados in the Midwest and South, and earthquakes on the West Coast. But, like tornados and earthquakes, I don’t think there’s any way to really prepare for the devestation a hurricane or other natural disaster can do. Driving through Mississippi, I felt like I was pretty much prepared to see New Orleans too. Driving into New Orleans though, I realized I wasn’t.

When Jeremy and I started dating, New Orleans was our gateway. 3 times in 1996, I either flew into or out of the Louis Armstrong airport. Jeremy lived in Alabama, but it was always cheaper for me to fly to New Orleans. I remember being 19 and walking down Bourbon street for the first time in awe of the debauchery in broad daylight :) But, there was always a small sense in that year, that while New Orleans wasn't home, it was the city that took me to Jeremy. And when you're young and in love, and apart from each other for long periods of time, that means a lot.

After we got married in 1997, our trips to New Orleans became a little less frequent. We still went, but it was cut back to maybe once a year, but we always got to stay longer than a day at that point. We’ve had several short stays and one week-long vacation with friends in that city. And each time we go, I realize how much more I want to see.

From the first time I walked down the Riverwalk, to the first time I ate beignets at Cafe Du Monde, to exploring the French Quarter and French Market, I fell in love with certain aspects of the city. I love the attitude of the people there, the deep south roots the city has, the gorgeous architecture of some of the places in the French Quarter, and especially some of the houses in the Garden District. I love standing outside Preservation Hall at night and listening to some of the best jazz I've ever heard in my life. Music permeates that city like no other city in America..and it's not like Beale Street in Memphis where the majority of the music is blues. It's not uncommon for jazz, zydeco, cajun, gospel, blues, and a few other types of music to all blend together. I fell in love with zydeco music at the Rock and Bowl many years ago, and I had a blast this trip seeing Lauren dancing along with some jazz, some zydeco, and even some gospel! I think one of the reasons that New Orleans resonates with me so much is because of my love for music, and there is no other city in the world that does music like New Orleans.

We were in Alabama 2 weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit, and talked about going to New Orleans for a couple of days while we were down there. How I have wished we had!

Driving into New Orleans last week, crossing the I-10 bridge and knowing that some of the sections of the bridge had been washed out in the storm was slightly nerve-wracking for me ~ especially when I could visualize exactly what the pictures of that bridge looked like in the days following Katrina. Once we got into the outskirts of the city, certain things struck me ~ like seeing a Wal-Mart Jeremy and I had gone to years before boarded up and abandoned, or looking into neighborhoods that looked like they should have been full of children riding bikes up and down streets or people outside enjoying the day and talking to each other. Instead, there might have been 1 or 2 houses that were lived in, and most of the other houses in the neighborhood had not been touched in 3 years. Windows were broken, houses were gutted, and one of the things I remember the most were the massive dumpsters parked on each street with tons of carpet and sheet rock and other building materials. I couldn’t believe that almost 3 years later, there were certain parts of the city that looked almost untouched.

In late August and early September of 2005, I watched in horror as the most terrible natural disaster I have ever seen unfolded on national television. I watched, captivated, as a city that I loved, rapidly descended into complete and utter chaos, while it looked like no one was going to do anything. A mandatory evacuation was issued, but in a city that relies on public transportation with thousands of people that didn't even own vehicles, no arrangements were made to help those people get out of the city. And while there's enough blame to cover all of the levels of government, I do think that in the aftermath, you see the effects of poor planning on every level. No one, from the city government on up to the national government had any idea what to do, or where to even start.

Lauren was about 10 weeks old or so when Katrina hit, and I remember being so impacted by the stories of mothers and their children up on the I-10 overpass that I had driven over so many times, with no water or shade in the blazing heat and humidity of New Orleans in early September. I watched with tears, as a man described on television how his wife and two daughters were swept away right out of his arms, and I finally got to a point where I had to turn the television off because it was consuming me. I was depressed a lot, and I couldn’t go to sleep at night for long periods of time because of all of the images I was seeing on TV.

I ended up doing some volunteer work with the families that were evacuated to our town, and I don't say any of this to say that what I went through was even a small small fraction of what those poor families went through, but I came out of Katrina with a deeper understanding of something I have struggled with at various walks in my faith. I struggled for a long time after that with questions like how could God let something like that happen? And a few months after the fact, and it's something I realize even more after we've been there now, I think there are things that God allows to happen if for no other reason than to us to be His hands and feet. People ask where God is in situations like that, and I have to say that He’s in the face of every single person that helped clean up or offer assistance. He’s in the hands and feet of the volunteers who went down there to work with complete strangers to let them know that they were not alone, and they were not going to have to go through the aftermath by themselves. I know that prayers are answered, but I don’t understand at times why God doesn’t step in and prevent suffering – from natural disasters or situations like the earthquake in China or the typhoon in Burma, or the thousands of hungry children around the world that pray for food every night. But I do know that God expects me to do something about it. Could God stop it if He so chose? Absolutely, but maybe there are times that He chooses to let things happen so that His people can show others a visible reminder of a God that loves each of us more than we can imagine. Whether it’s actually going to do mission work in another country or state, or raising Lauren to have the desire to do that, or sending a check every month to sponsor a child in a third-world country, or just donating food or clothes to a local shelter, I think God calls us to make a difference on a daily basis ~ not just when disasters strike. Although, I think sometimes we have to have those disasters as reminders to not get too complacent in our daily walks. I also think that each time some kind of crisis hits, it creates (or should be creating) a little bit more of a longing to go Home, and it shows us just how much we are aliens here.

New Orleans is rebuilding, and I have to say it was so very hard for me last week to not ask every single person we interacted with what their Katrina story was – because I knew that everyone that lived down there was affected by the storm. Not everyone lost all they had, but everyone lost something – whether it was their homes, their possessions, or just a feeling of security or even innocence, everyone lost something. As we left the city last Friday, I was amazed at the number of tents set up under the I-10 overpass by the Superdome. In a space of maybe 1/10th of a mile, there were probably 50 tents that people were living in. I remember some tents from earlier visits, but I had never seen that many there before. There is still so much more that needs to be done. I do know that my prayers for that region have been renewed – especially after seeing how far they have to go. And I cannot wait to go back again to see how far they’ve come.

I know this post has been mostly just a bunch of rambling, but I have needed an outlet to get part of the emotions I felt last week out, so if you’re still reading thanks! And if you really are still reading, say a little prayer tonight of thankfulness that you have a bed to sleep in and food to eat and clothes to wear, and say a little prayer for the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast as they are still struggling to rebuild almost 3 years later.

Excuses, Excuses

I know, I know. I've been promising to do this for weeks now. And just when I feel like I have nothing to write about, I start thinking back to all the things that have happened in the last few weeks and realize that I do have a lot to blog about. So here goes. A few weeks ago, Jeremy started building a pergola onto the back of our house. What we thought would be a maybe 2 weekend project is now dragging out into a sweet forever, but one day soon (hopefully before Lauren's 3rd birthday) we'll have shade and ceiling fans and a really nice spot to sit outside and enjoy the view of the creek from our backyard. If anyone would like to help us paint, we have plenty of brushes :) Here's a picture of what it looks like right now:




I can't wait to see it once our backyard is cleaned up! So anyway, the pergola building started, work picked up, birthday parties happened, 2 neices graduated, and I just got busy. I kept thinking "I must update the blog or I will lose my faithful 3 readers!" However, it just never happened, and I kept pushing it farther and farther out. But fear not my faithful 3 readers, here is your update, along with lots of pictures of our little one!

The slideshow covers what we've done the last few weeks.



We are now firmly ensconced in planning a birthday party. I cannot believe almost 3 years have gone by! Every day gets a little more challenging and a little more fun, as Lauren develops into her own little person. Questions are asked all the time at our house, and I stay mentally exhausted, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I have a post about my first New Orleans trip that has been circling around in my head for a few days now, but I didn't want to turn completely serious in my first post back. So, someday soon, when I've sorted it all out, I'll blog about it, but until then....enjoy the slideshow!