Evacuation

Our city officials are doing an evacuation of elderly and disabled beginning at Noon today and have called for a voluntary evacuation of the rest of the city. If the storm continues on the same track or worsens then we have been advised that a mandatory evacuation will be called for at 6 AM tomorrow. So...the children and I are leaving within the hour to head North to Dallas and will be spending a long weekend with my parents. Mark is going to wait until tomorrow to help batten down the church should the danger of imminent damage to our town be clearer and then he'll decide if he's going to ride it out with other locals, which many are doing, or if he'll then head North to meet us.

Please pray for the safety of our family, our friends and our home. It's a very surreal feeling walking from room to room trying to decide what you'll pack for a "just in case" event. We've collected all the precious things that cannot be replaced and they're piled in the dining room in tubs and trunks ready for Mark to load them into his vehicle.

I'll try to post regularly so no one worries about us.

Changing of the Guard

Ella is one lucky little girl. She has three big brothers to always watch over her and take care of her. Only those brothers didn't immediately take on that responsibility when she was born, it's a honed craft that takes years to develop. We're still working on it but for years now Ella has said, "Max, always helps me" and in a lower hushed tone, never where her other brothers could hear her, she'd say, "he's my favorite." Shocking to the other two I know it would be but hey, Max worked hard for that distinction.

So last night I was putting Ella to bed and we were talking about her routine of walking to and from school and I asked her if she was going into the cafeteria in the morning and she said, "yesterday, Ben just walked me to my classroom" and I said, "what did you do when you were walking home?" and she said, "my teacher says we need to tell her goodbye everyday so that she knows we're leaving before we get up off the bench outside, so I saw MT and Ben and called their names and they came over". I asked if they both then walked her home and she said, "well, Ben did but MT just ran off. Ben is becoming a good brother," she said with a smile.

I then went out into the older boys room and was rubbing their backs praising Ben for being such a good big brother and he got this wide grin on his face that showed such pride in knowing his little sister was now depending on him more. Then Max chimed in and said, "it's an important job, guess you can take over for me now a little bit." Three big brothers, every little girl's dream! There's still hope for Mark Thomas right?!

Back to School

Finally the children are all back in school. We had a wonderful summer, full of more activities than we thought there would be and everyone had a lot of fun. Two significant milestones for our family were on tap for back to school. Max started 6th grade at the middle school and Ella went to kindergarten. Everyone left for school and returned with smiles on their faces so we were very thankful for that. Ella walks to school with Ben and Mark Thomas and they're under strict instructions to walk her home. So far so good. I take and pick up Max on my way to and from work and it works out perfectly.

With Ella, there is always a funny story, so this was our conversation last night while we were at the ball field. Max is on a select baseball team now so we're already practicing.
"I can't believe kindergartens have PE, wait is PE what's in the gym?" "yes" I said, "what did you do in PE today?" "Squads, I don't even know what a squad is, but Coach said, you're in squad 1, then he said squad 2, squad 3, squad 4, squad 5, squad 6, and squad 7. That's a lot of squads, Mom." Then he said, "what are your brother's names" and she said, "Max and MT" and I said, "what about Ben?" and she said, "I didn't want to list too many names." Oh my little Ella Clare. Always great for a laugh, just when you need it.


Another new addition. As if I didn't have enough to clean up after. Add another pet with black hair that sheds! But she is sweet. Rescued from the dumpster, literally. Whiskers had no idea the lap of luxury that awaited her.

Ella's first day of kindergarten. Can you tell she's lost 5 teeth already?

Our crazy crew, back to school! Praise the Lord!

School supplies for three children, thankfully in middle school they don't request 5 dozen pencils and 8 boxes of crayons along with countless other things. I felt like I was buying for the whole class based on what they asked us to buy for each child.

Wee Wacky Wednesday

Our church has a great program run during the summer on Wednesdays where kids younger than junior high down to age 4 can come every week and explore a great activity with other children. Today they went to the Houston Aquarium and had a ball. Mark even got in on the action. I was so shocked when Mark showed me the picture of Ella on the ride, this is the very same girl who a year ago would not go on one single ride at Disney World except It's a Small World. While those three were out of town, I took Max to middle school to register him. Three hours, it took. I told him I felt like I was buying a house, with all the paper work I filled out. We had a good time together though.

Fun times with Cousins

The kids had a great time at Mimi and Papa's last week. Two movies, laser tag, indoor rock wall climbing, waterpark and many evenings out on the boat, swimming and tubing. Mark Thomas and Macie had a little adventure on the tube that led to MT getting a small black eye and Papa having to buy a new liner for the tube. Max now realizes the fun of having Papa go a little crazy while driving and had fun "falling out" of the tube. And the three little girls are just too funny with each other. We affectionately call them "Triple Trouble" and they usually live up to it. All the kids are so close in age and it's just so much fun to see them interacting with each other. I'm so thankful that we see them more often now that we're in TX. It's a very special relationship and they're all very connected. Max and Carson were even swapping school stories and when Heather and I would ask them a question they would give each other glances trying to determine how much information they wanted to divulge. A little scary for Heather and I but we're glad they feel close enough to chat about that "stuff".

Mark ended up coming along too for the water park day. I had planned to drive up by myself to get them and return on Sunday but when Ben found out that Mark wasn't coming he started to spread a little smack and when Mark found out about it he decided to surprise him. So he called Ben from the car trip up and was telling Ben how much he wished he could be there and Ben was not happy at all. I called them a little later and again Ben was saying how much he wanted to go down the slides with Mark and I played dumb, not hard these days with all that's been going on this summer with 4 crazy kids at home. So when I pulled into my parent's driveway, I went in the back door as usual and was greeted by all the kids, very affectionately I might add, since they hadn't seen me in 5 days and then the front door bell rang and the kids ran to open it. Don't quite know why they always act as if they've never heard that sound before or had visitors but it's always a fight to see who will get there first. So when they opened the door and saw Mark it was rather priceless. Mark said, "I heard someone here was trash talking on my good name" and Ben just got this huge smile on his face. It was a fun week of family time and many more memories were made.

Finally up and running

Our hard drive crashed about three weeks ago and we're just so darn busy that it took us forever to get it fixed. So thanks to Mr. Craig Pember we're up and running again today. Unfortunately we lost all of our email addresses through Outlook so if you don't mind, if you check in and read this post, please email us at keffercrew@gt.rr.com just so we can add you back in.

A whole week alone

Summer is quickly coming to an end and I think we're all ready to see it go. It's always fun to have the kids at home but I thrive on routine and when every week is different with camps and activities, it just makes it hard to ever find a routine. My parents came this weekend to see the boys last swim meet and they left this afternoon and took all 4 kids with them! Hooray, Mark and I have 5 whole days to ourselves and then I'll drive up to Dallas to get them next weekend and head home, but not before me and my sisters and their crews head to a local waterpark for some Swafford family fun! All of our kids are so close to each other and they get so excited knowing they're going to see each other, so it'll be a fun week had by everyone.

The boys had a great swim season this year. Max finished third overall in the region for high points and he's in the bottom of his age bracket. So look out swimmers next year when he's in the top of his bracket.

Ben swam a great season too! He's got great form and motors through the water with all his upper body strength. You should see him in action.

Mark Thomas was the only swimmer called to receive his awards with a nickname. The coaches said, "Mark Thomas, 'Wild Man' will you come up and get your awards?" His name will always proceed him. He's a charmer, quickly becoming the favorite among all the high school girls. Boy, are we ever in trouble.

And last but not least, Ella received an honoary award for being a faithful supporter, "always dressed up and accompanying her pal, Danielle" said the coaches. She was so surprised, it was adorable! If you've got to travel all over town to cheer on your brothers you might as well do it in style, right?!


I'm off to watch the finale of Design Star. Can't wait to see who wins!