Texas again

Here we are in Houston. We've only been gone two-and-a-half years, but we're still completely shocked at how warm it is down here. My kids are walking around in jeans and long sleeves while most people are wearing shorts and tank tops.

We had a lovely Christmas. Here's Julia opening the big Santa present. She looks surprised because she thought Wiis were only for "rich kids." (Turns out Wiis are for rich kids AND poor kids who have generous grandparents.) The Wii has been great fun. Well, it was until Jenna grabbed the Wii Sports disc (which is only available with the purchase of a Wii) and bit down on it. That disc lasted us a grand total of three hours on Christmas day. I don't know what got into that child. We have a ton of CDs and DVDs that she's never felt compelled to chew on. Anyway, just let me sing the praises of the Nintendo company because when I called and explained what happened, the customer service rep (after laughing rather heartily) said they'd send us another one free of charge. Thank you, Nintendo! Jenna will NOT be handling any more of our Wii discs until we are certain she is capable of keeping her teeth off of them.

Here's Jenna with her big Santa present, the seven-doll set of Disney Princesses. Yes, the same set I kept rolling my eyes at whenever I saw it at Target. The same set I thought was ridiculously priced. The same set I returned to Target for five days before Christmas because I knew deep down the whole time that Jenna would love it. Which she does.

Another surprise under the tree this year was a package from WorldVision containing information about Vandana, the 7-year-old girl from India we are sponsoring. Chad and I decided to sponsor a WorldVision child at the Third Day concert last month, and we surprised the girls with the news on Christmas morning. Vandana lives in a society in which men and boys are the first to get food when it's available, so many women and girls are malnourished. (How MESSED UP is that?) Our monthly sponsorship will help feed Vandana as well as pay for her education and other needs. We look forward to sending her letters and hearing back from her and including her in our family's daily prayers. For more info on sponsoring a child through WorldVision, go here and click on "sponsor a child."

After looking at photos from last year's Christmas and this year's, I discovered Julia and I have committed a holiday fashion faux pas. Look carefully:

Christmas 2008

Christmas 2007

Christmas 2008


Christmas 2007

That's right. Julia and I wore the same pajamas two years in a row. We'll have to plan better next year.

For something we DIDN'T plan on this year, we managed to work in Jenna's first ER trip over the holidays. A cart holding a folding wall partition rolled over her finger in our church gym last week and basically peeled the end of her finger off. It looks much better now, but at the time, what with all the blood and skin hanging off, it was pretty icky. The staff at Arkansas Children's Hospital was wonderful and got her all bandaged up before sending her home with some nice pain meds. The whole experience gave me an idea though. Why not equip children's hospitals with wet bars? I think parents who are rattled from carrying their blood-dripping children into the ER might appreciate it.

Lately.

I tend to get annoyed by blog posts that go on and on about why the blogger hasn't been blogging lately. So I'll be quick about it: It's not that I don't have time to get on the computer. It's that I don't have time to get on the computer and complete any kind of thought process. So let's catch up.

Here's a photo I forgot to share with you from my quick trip to Texas last month. One thing I've noticed about Arkansas is that you don't see humongous state flags flying all over the place. So it's something that stands out to me when I visit the Lone Star State. Here's a photo I took in Waco while driving AND trying to find a radio station that wasn't playing Tejano music. Am I talented or what.

We had Thanksgiving -- just the four of us -- right here at home. It was very nice to not have to go anywhere. The last time we had a just-us Thanksgiving at home was in 2003, when I miscarried the day before we supposed to leave to spend the holiday with Chad's people in Lubbock. I have a foggy memory of me wandering teary-eyed through the Baytown Wal-Mart to get stuff for a last-minute Thanksgiving for three at our house. Very depressing memory. So I was glad to replace it with a happy, stay-at-home Thanksgiving memory this year.

I went all out and freed the china and crystal from their prison in my china hutch. I mean, why not?






And what do the Nall girls wear to such a grand occasion?





Their jammies, of course.


The next day, we decked the halls for Christmas. You might notice Jenna is still wearing her jammies from the day before. That's how we roll in our house. The less laundry, the better.






Speaking of rolling, this is how a youth minister's family finds out last year's graduates are home from college:



"Great to see you guys! How long is your break? That long? ... Oh."

Now Christmas us almost upon us. Chad's mom has been with us since Dec. 1, and she'll go with us to Houston on the 23rd. For you Baytown folks, we plan to be at MoSt the Sunday morning after Christmas. Hope to see you then!

20 Years Ago...

I stole this off Jacinda's blog. I could REALLY confuse everyone and just use her answers, but I decided to come up with my own. Here's what I was doing...

20 years ago (1988)

I was a senior at Beaumont Christian High School in Beaumont, TX. I was thinking about breaking up with the guy I had been dating since 10th grade, and I finally did in December. What else was going on in October? Let's see -- at school, we seniors were probably getting ready for the senior spook house at the annual fall fest. I had big hair, and not just at Halloween. And I was a brunette. But not for long.

10 years ago (1998)

In October 1998, Chad and I were living in Abilene and I was gradually coming out of my bout with hyperemesis during my pregnancy with Julia. What a NIGHTMARE. I was also fighting to get my strength back up to pull off ACU's Homecoming, which I was in charge of. It all came together with the help of Kelly and all the other wonderful students on my steering committee. Oh, and after a summer of me staying in the hospital way beyond my sick leave, Chad (who was in grad school) and I were completely BROKE. No savings and sometimes, no income. We made it through somehow and welcomed a sweet baby girl into our family a few months later.

5 years ago (2003)

We had been in Baytown, TX for three years. Chad was a youth minister and I was taking Julia to preschool and writing for The Baytown Sun. That was a rough year -- by October, I had had two miscarriages and was about to have a third. What was up with my reproductive system? Soon Jenna would be on her way, though, and then I would get out of the baby-making business FOR GOOD. Despite that difficult year, I still have sweet memories of Julia as a four-year-old and of our family being active with our church and community.

1 year ago (2007)

Now we're in Arkansas! Julia was in third grade and Jenna was in preschool. I was writing for magazines by then, which, guess what? Pay a WHOLE LOT BETTER than newspapers. So goodbye, newspaper writing... nice knowin' ya! We were also busy with church/youth group stuff and enjoying fall in Arkansas, which is always lovely. The girls were gearing up for Halloween (Julia was Hannah Montana...someone she wouldn't be caught dead dressing up as now).

yesterday (October 8, 2008)

I weeded out clothes to donate to charity, went to my weekly Bible study, went to lunch with friends, managed to lose our cat, and went to Refuge where I spoke to the teens about finding value in others.

today (October 9, 2008)

Secured the cell phone number of our neighbor, who is in Florida, because I could hear a cat meowing in her garage and I was convinced it was ours. She gave me her garage code and when I opened the door, it was ANOTHER cat. Not ours, not the neighbor's, just some random cat. Weird. Chad and I took Jenna to preschool and I'm lining up interviews and doing research for my next deadline.

tomorrow (October 10, 2008)

Friday. I really have NO CLUE what we're doing tomorrow. I guess finding the cat would be good.

Then and Now

We're still praying for our friends in Baytown and surrounding areas who are recovering from Hurricane Ike. We understand half of Baytown still has no power, and the clean-up process has a long way to go. Here are some pics our friend David Smith took of our old neighborhood:

Our old house. The blue tarp on the back corner (where Julia's room was) shows the house sustained damage in the same spot where a tree landed during Hurricane Rita in 2005.

Down the street from our house. These houses back up to what's known as "Slapout Gully" (which feeds into Burnet Bay) and sustained a lot of flooding.

A big tree down about five houses away from our old house.

A couple of blocks from our old house. I don't know how to describe how beautiful Baytown's neighborhood of Lakewood -- and our old street in particular -- used to be. We lived on North Burnet Drive, which is the last street before the bay. The houses across the street from us were waterfront houses. It was an older neighborhood with huge magnolias, vibrant azaleas and lush oleanders. We even once had wisteria that wound its way across our back fence. You can imagine what it was like for me to move from dry, drought-ridden Abilene into southeast Texas' very own Garden of Eden in 2001. I hope Baytown and Lakewood can eventually become what they once were.

And now on to Kemah. We lived about 30 minutes from the Kemah Boardwalk and we loved going there. It had restaurants, a midway, shops and a hotel.

Here's Jenna at Kemah in 2005 with a view of some of the shops over her right shoulder...





...and what the same area looks like now.











The midway area as it looked when Chad and I rode the ferris wheel on my birthday several years ago...






...and the midway now. There was also a carousel where we took some great pictures of Julia and my dad when she was a toddler. After Ike, horses from the carousel were found scattered throughout the park.







The Kemah Boardwalk entrance back in its glory days...







...and the entrance now.










The Saltgrass restaurant as it looked when our good friends Bill and Margaret Ehlig took us there a few days before we moved to Arkansas...






...and the Saltgrass now.







So please keep praying for everyone on the Gulf Coast who lost so much. The news media has basically moved on to other things, and it never gave Baytown much attention anyway, except for the refineries there. But there are still lots of people hurting and trying to figure out how to rebuild their lives.

Memories of the Coast

Because I've either lived on the Texas Gulf Coast or had relatives living there as long as I can remember, I have literally a lifetime of memories of that area...especially the beaches of Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula. That photo is of the girls and me at Crystal Beach in 2005, when Julia was six and Jenna was not quite one. I have deadlines looming for now, but I'm planning on blogging my coastal memories when I get a chance.


We've also learned that Lakewood, our Baytown neighborhood, sustained some pretty major damage from the hurricane. Actually, we keep hearing the term "war zone." We're not even sure if our old house is still standing. Our friends the Springers lost most of their house to a giant oak tree during the storm, and we understand they are one of many families who has suffered that kind of loss. (The Springers visited us here in AR for a few days last January. That's a photo of Julia and Meagan's joyful reunion when we picked them up at the airport.) A few months ago I blogged about how much I loved Lakewood, and you can read it here.

On a happier note, I'm still working on a feature about gourmet shops in the area for the Nov. issue of Arkansas Life magazine. Thursday, to combine a lunch date with research, Chad and I went to the Boulevard Bread Company in the Heights. It is locally owned and they bake a jillion different kinds of bread fresh every day. There is no other place like it around here -- I may never go to Panera again! I ordered the hippiest thing on the menu, which was a vegan hummus sandwich. I know it sounds kinda gross, but it was SO yummy and I've been craving it ever since. I guess I'll be going back soon!

Great Storm

A photo of Galveston's seawall this morning. The statue commemorates the 1900 Storm, which killed 6,000-8,000 people and remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

We are praying for friends and family in Baytown, Houston, Beaumont, Galveston and other areas within Ike's reach.

Haunted buildings and other things

Some recent developments:

The Arkansas State Capitol building is apparently haunted.

Queen Victoria apparently had a 50-inch waist.

I apparently have pink eye and can't wear my contacts for a week. This is the longest I've gone without wearing contacts since I first got them in 7th grade.

A church in our former hometown of Baytown had a drawing to give away $150 in gas. And you know what? That won't even fill up my tank.

"Breaking Dawn," the fourth book in the Twilight series, will be released at midnight tomorrow night. Julia and I devoured the first three (I did censor a couple of parts of Eclipse for her, which she didn't mind -- once I told her what they were about.) Julia wants to attend the release party at the Little Rock Barnes & Noble, but I'm leaning toward sticking closer to home and going to a tamer release party at one of the local libraries. The B&N party will be complete with a costume contest and I think a bookstore full of vampires might be a bit much for a 9-year-old, no matter how much she loves the books.

To Texas and Back

We're back from the first of our two Texas trips of the summer. On June 5, we headed to my parents' house near Houston before going on to Baytown the next day. When we visit Baytown, there are two things I can't wait to do:

1) See Lois, my best Baytown girlfriend,
2) and eat some decent Tex-Mex, which we have yet to find in the otherwise lovely state of Arkansas.

So we usually manage to combine the Lois/Mexican food thing into one glorious outing. There are three El Toro locations in Baytown, and this is the one on Garth Road. It's the one where Jennifer Garner lunched with family when she was in town for the funeral of her grandmother, a long-time Baytown resident, several months ago. So if Baytown has a celebrity hotspot, I guess this El Toro would be it.

Later we met up with Lois and her dashing husband Bill at the Baytown Target. (Lois is one of my sisters in Targethood.) We also ran into Jason, one of our former youth groupers, with his mom Karen and niece Aurora. (Aurora's mom Michelle is also one of our former youth groupers. Possibly the coolest youth group member we've ever had.)


Jenna and Aurora were instant best friends and ran off to shop the One Spot.

The next day was the wedding of Amber and Brant at our old church. It was great seeing former youth group members get married, and we also got to see so many people who were so special to us during the six years we were there. (Some trivia about Brant: he and some accomplices, including Aurora's mom Michelle, once wrapped our house with 96 rolls of toilet paper. It took me ten minutes just to unwrap our mailbox.)

On Monday, we got to spend some time with Chad's dad, who lives with his wife about an hour from my parents' house. Here are the girls very much enjoying having a grandpa with his own pool.





Julia had spent the night with Meagan, her Baytown BFF, and left her DS case at Meagan's house. So what better excuse did we need to meet Meagan and her mom Toni (they visited us in Arkansas over Christmas break) at the Houston Children's Museum? Here are Julia and Meagan battling with fake bread sticks from the museum's pretend grocery store.

Living in a land-locked state, we naturally had to get our beach fix.

















My cute parents. That day was their 45th anniversary!

















The girls in the shark cage at Moody Gardens. I actually had some peace there for a second!

Bird's-Eye View

I was goofing around at TerraServer the other night and did a search for an aerial shot of our house in Baytown. The image is pretty grainy (which is why I didn't make it bigger), but something made me do a double-take. Our car is parked in the driveway. The photo was taken in January of 2002. We were still living there.

I think the car is our Taurus, which I drove until a drunk driver decided we didn't need it anymore in 2003. I stared at this blurred image for a long time -- trying to imagine what three-year-old Julia and I were doing that day. The image date is Jan. 27, which was a Sunday, but I'm not sure that's correct. I also found an aerial shot of our church supposedly taken on the same day, but the parking lot just has a few cars in it -- including one that looks like Chad's -- so the photo looks more like it was taken on a weekday instead of a Sunday.

At any rate, the picture made me think about how much I loved our neighborhood in Baytown. Lakewood was a beautiful, azalea- and magnolia-filled neighborhood that ran right up to the edge of Burnet Bay. David G. Burnet, who served as president of the Republic of Texas for a short time, purchased 17 acres in the area in 1831. Nathaniel Lynch, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old 300 colonists, owned a few hundred acres there, and Burnet ended up buying a lot of it from Lynch's descendants. Most of present-day Lakewood is contained within the land once owned by Burnet and Lynch. I loved living in such a beautiful, historic place. We could look between the waterfront houses across the street from us and see the San Jacinto monument against a gorgeous sunset just about every evening. David G. Burnet's wife Hannah is buried in an unmarked grave in what is now someone's front yard just down the street from where we lived.

Here are Julia and her best friend Meagan at the Lakewood neighborhood pool, which has been in continuous operation since the 1950s. Meagan's dad grew up in Lakewood, and she has grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who live there. Lakewood residents (except us!) typically don't move away. We knew several families who have lived there for generations and who go to church, work and school in Lakewood -- almost never leaving the neighborhood.

Here's Julia in the LONG driveway in front of our house. It was perfect for sidewalk chalk!

We love our neighborhood here in Bryant, too. And, after the fixer-upper we had on North Burnet Drive in Lakewood, I was nothing less than jubilant to move into our current house, which is only a few years old and needed no work done to it at all. But I'll always miss Lakewood. Maybe I'll retire there someday.

They're here!

We've been having insane amounts of fun with Meagan, Julia's best Baytown friend, and Meagan's mom, Toni. Here are Meagan and Julia at the airport with the sign Julia made. We spent yesterday shopping and today we're doing the Clinton Library/downtown Little Rock/State Capitol thing before they fly back tomorrow. We've also been staying up past midnight playing Apples to Apples and Dance Dance Revolution. Both girls start school on Monday so this is a fun way for them to wrap up the holidays.

Ewwww...

I subscribe to Better Homes & Gardens. It's got great articles, photos and recipes. Plus I figure if I keep a copy of it and a couple of Williams-Sonoma catalogs on the coffee table, I will appear to have better taste than I actually do. Anyway, I never see anything in the magazine that scares me. That is until I opened up the latest issue and found this:



It's a gelatin salad containing celery, green onions, cucumbers and vinegar. Some people who reviewed the recipe online said not to judge it by the way it looks because it really is good. But I think I'll keep my veggies separate from my Jell-o, thank you.


Scary recipes aside, here are some things we have been doing this month. Here's Jenna performing at the children's program at the Bible study I go to every week...

... and here's Julia outside the Clinton Presidential Library last weekend.

We also visited Little Rock's River Market that day...

...and spent the afternoon hanging out downtown. Isn't downtown Little Rock cute?

I love seeing the father of my children carry around their girly stuff. Jenna is relatively new to venturing out in big-girl panties, so we have to carry a clean-up kit and complete change of clothes everywhere we go.

Then Tuesday we headed down to Houston for Thanksgiving. We gathered with my brother Brian at my parents' house and met my aunt and uncle from Beaumont for dinner on Thursday. On Saturday, we drove through Baytown on our way home and met Julia's best Baytown friends, Natalie and Meagan, for lunch.

The countdowns are on -- Hannah Montana this Saturday and Meagan and her mom coming to visit exactly one month after that!

Suddenly, Texas

Chad's dad got very sick late last week and wound up in ICU in Houston, so Sunday we all of a sudden packed up and drove down there. After a scary couple of days over the weekend, he is doing much better. He was even sitting up in a chair when we visited him on Monday and he will probably go home later this week.

After spending some time at the hospital Monday, the girls and I decided to let Chad and his dad have some time together. So we headed out to Baytown to surprise some people. Julia was dying to see Meagan and Natalie, her best Baytown friends, so I called their moms and arranged to surprise them by picking them up from school.

Here's Meagan's reaction. It's so much fun to surprise people like this!

After a Dairy Queen stop...


...we headed to the library, where these girls grew up hanging out together. On the way to Baytown, I had also called Lois, my best Baytown girlfriend, and she and her husband Bill met us at the library.


Bill asked Jenna to bring him a book for him to read to her, and she brought him one about the dangers of LSD!

Then we went back to Houston, where we celebrated my dad's birthday. We also got to help my mom out at home -- she's recovering from shoulder surgery. We headed home Tuesday and, this morning, sent a bleary-eyed Julia off to school. She's going to have a ton of make-up work, poor kid.

Another highlight from the trip: On the way home, we stopped in Hope, Arkansas (birthplace of Bill Clinton!) at Subway for dinner, where Jenna kept yelling, "I'M A ROCK STAR! I'M A ROCK STAR!"