IKE

We've had a lot of e-mails and calls since Ike made his presence known on his way through Houston. We appreciate the love and concern from each of you. I thought I would give an update here for all to read.

We decided not to evacuate for Hurricane Ike. Our area was asked to "hunker down"* since we weren't in a flood zone.

Ike was a crazy storm!! I think it hit a lot harder than we expected. Our neighborhood took a pretty good hit and sustained a lot of damage. Lots of trees and power lines came down. Our home was blessed with very little damage. We lost an eight foot section of our fence and three of our little trees fell over but all are already fixed.

Unfortunatley we are one of the 22% of people who don't have power back yet. Tonight at midnight will mark our 13th day without power. The Centerpoint website says our neighborhood should have power back by Sunday. We are hoping it will be sooner since there have been a lot of work trucks in the neighborhood.

I wish I could say I was tough enough to handle it and was still in Houston but I am not. The kids and I came up to Chicago last Tuesday. Our side of the street was also having sewage problems and that was the last straw for me.

We will post some pictures after I get home and our power is restored.

Thanks again for all of your calls and e-mails to check on us!

*For you non-Texans out there. Hunker down means to shelter in place :)

The time has come...

We decided to start this blog last spring. I decided I would send the link out after I made my first official post. As you can see I haven't been too good at doing that! I am hoping to turn over a new leaf but I'm not making any promises!!

First Days of School

My good man Jeremy started 1st Grade two weeks ago, having to wade his way to the school entrance through a sea of his mother's tears. I went in to work late so the family could drive him over as Tara was in no state to drive. Jermaine, of course, couldn't wait to start school and was upset a few weeks ago when he mistakenly thought school started a week earlier than it did and he still had 7 more miserable days of summer. weirdo.




Abbie Leigh started pre-school last week, which broke her old man's heart. She is growing up way too fast. She's my snuggle bunny and she promised to marry me, but everday I fear that switch in her mind will finally flip and I'll just be another lame parent like her mother.

If a tree falls in the forest . . .

When we first moved into our house in Summer 2006, we had a beautiful 50 foot tree in the backyard. It was great because, while the base of the trunk was in the backyard, it grew at an angle such that the top was over the middle of the house. So it provided some nice shade over the yard and the roof. The pictures below attempt to show what I mean, though when we first moved in, it was much greener and more full than what is shown here.










Ever since we moved in, we would find small branches littered across the lawn after any rain or slight wind. The fallen branches were small and the tree looked healthy, so we didn't think much of it. Over time, however, the volume and size of branches falling to the yard seemed to increase with each rain. And then we noticed that the tree had several branches that had stopped producing leaves.

Toward the end of the summer of 2007, we decided to have a tree guy come look at it and tell us if he thought we could salvage the tree by trimming out the dead branches and give it a deep root fertilization. He agreed that it would help and made and offer to do the work. We, of course, did nothing.

The following spring, the tree started leaving later than any of the trees in the neighborhood. More than half of the branches did not produce any leaves, and those that did had leaves that were wilted and brownish. Finally, a fairly sizable branch came down on the back lawn and Tara, the wise, instructed me that I better call the tree dude back and get it trimmed up, or possible cut down, before any other big branches came down.

Me, being the typical awesome husband, disobeyed Tara's commands for about 6 weeks, just on principle. As you might expect, I should have only procrastinated for 5 1/2 weeks as a large branch gave way and put a nice hole in the roof over our back patio.





So we finally had a guy come out to hack it down recently. It took him 3 days - the first day he was rain delayed after a couple of hours, the second day he got it down to the stump, and the last day he ground said stump and hauled off the last 10 feet of the trunk.





I think he underestimated the job a wee. On the second day, he said to me with a tone of despair "This is a big tree." I didn't realize exactly how big it was either until I drove off to work and looked back the the house to see the worker half way up the tree. I called Tara and told her to take a picture of the guy and she dutifully did so.





Needless to say, it was a sad day at the fontee house the day we lost our tree. We promptly planted a new tree in the back to replace it. It should only take about 100 years so to grow as large as the one we just dropped. So we got that going for us, which is nice.

Magic Powers

Jeremy came to me the other night and told me he locked the bathroom door, then closed it behind him as he walked out. He then used his magic words and told the door to unlock, but when he tried to open it, it was still locked. He concluded "My magic powers are still getting better."

He's been training hard ever since I pulled a couple of quarters out of his and Abbie's ears.

Anyway, I am posting because Tara is taking forever to get going on this. In her defense, she was called as Primary Prez shortly after we set this up and now I watch TV alone in the evenings. That's a crazy freaking calling.

Anyway, here's a fun set of pictures of Ben getting progressively more upset on his little truck. Tara took these and as she showed them to me, I kept thinking "surely she put the camera down and picked him after that one." But she just kept snapping pics. She's a good mom (most of the time).

welcome to the fontanecdotes launch party

Pete here.

We've finally entered the digital age. After years of viewing our friends blogs, we decided to launch our own. Really its just that our kids are finally cute enough to post pictures of them online.

We'll start with a simple pic of the fam and go from here. Hope you enjoy this blog as much as we have enjoyed yours.