The last of the drops of summer are slowly leaking out.  I am loving the angles and softness of the autumn light as it creeps throughout the house.  The harshness of the summer sun has seemed to have dulled just a bit.  It’s the early days of September, which here in Houston still constitutes summer weather, but over the last few days a hint of cooler weather can be felt.  I am hoping this is a sign of a nice and chilly fall.

In our backyard garden hints of summer remain…but only for just a short while.  Welcome September.  Welcome autumn!

The technique ended up being as easy as it sounded and I loved the results.  I started taking pictures too late into the process, so I didn’t get a picture of the magazine photo I used before I started.  Here are some photos though from about the middle of the process, all the way until the picture ended up on a journal page:

I want to get Catherine hooked on some sort of memory keeping, whether it be journaling or scrapbooking (or some other medium) so that later on down the line she has a way of processing some of her life story.  I got her a little book to start coloring and gluing in.  She sat right beside me and colored and glued to her hearts content.  How cool will it be when she is 30 to look back at an art journal book she drew in when she was 3?

I had no idea that cucumbers could grow this large.  I had no idea that WE could grow a cucumber this large.  I guess if it gets hidden under a tomato plant and thus forgotten about, a cucumber could quite possibly take over the world…or at least our backyard.  By the way, it was way over 2 pounds.

Several months ago, my organization was invited to participate in the Texas Rangers firefighter appreciation night.  They wanted to honor an organization that worked with the families of fallen firefighters and a local Arlington firefighter had given them our name.  When I got the email from their rep. I almost deleted it thinking it was spam.  When I opened it and actually read it, I still thought it was too good to be true.  I quickly emailed the rep to see if I read the request correctly and he replied within minutes.  His email was not spam and they really did want to recognize our organization and the families of fallen firefighters.

I was pretty excited about going to my first baseball game in a LONG, LONG time.  My first baseball game was the Oakland A’s back in junior high and then when I worked as a medic in the Astrodome, I got to see a few Astro’s games.  Two families that I had worked with, the Staley’s and the Bale’s, both wanted to attend.  And the executive director of the Federation of Fire Chaplains, Ed Stauffer and his family came along.

Not only were they going to be honoring us at the game but we were going to be able to go out on the field for pictures, meet Nolan Ryan, and then they would make a donation to our organization.  We also got to sit in a suite, which was, well, sweet!  I actually didn’t get that much time in the suite because we met up with some good friends of ours who are also fire chaplains.  We had a great time and the experience was unforgettable!  I hope they choose for us to come back next year!

I didn’t realize that 3 year olds can be totally into a fad but it looks like we have one on our hands.  Catherine is just completely obsessed with the Silly Bands craze.  As you can see on her arm she has about 30 of them.  They remind me of some punk rock phase from the 80′s.  She won’t keep any other type of jewelry on her body but these little rubber, animal (or anything) shaped bands she can’t get enough of.  The first set she got she accidentally misplaced (she’s still into stashing things into boxes and bags) about three days ago and she was devastated.  I told her we would buy her another set as soon as she got all five hearts on her chart for sleeping through the night.  Well, she did manage to find them before we had to buy her a new set but she didn’t let her daddy forget that he still JUST HAD TO BUY her more of them as soon as she got that last heart.  She knows how many she has and if one is missing, all hell breaks loose.

Even though Catherine has gone to summer school, we were all still a bit anxious about starting pre-k 3 today.  I was ready for her to get back into her school routine but I was a little worried how she might do with her new teacher and the new classroom.  Well, no worries needed here because she marched right in and was ready to go!  I’m almost looking forward to kindergarten because I think she really thrives in the classroom setting.  I can’t wait to see how much she will grow and change this year as she moves full steam ahead to being a 4 year old.  The kids in the pre-k 4 class just seem so big!

Here are a couple of pics from today:

And one last silly picture to leave you with a smile

Yesterday, a Marine and an Army soldier, were presented the keys to their new lives in League City, TX.  I had the pleasure and honor of being there as they were handed those keys.  They shared their stories about how they were injured and it hit me hard.  We see stories on the news almost daily about those individuals who are injured or killed in this war but to be face to face with such a hero was life-changing.  This individual was shot in the face, survived, and kept fighting for another hour before he was taken to a medical unit for care.  This individual took a bullet for this country.  He was out there putting his life on the line in order to protect and serve our country.  It made me a little teary eyed.

After the presentations were made, I waited my turn to speak to these two heroes.  When I finally had the chance to shake their hands, I told him how proud I was of him.  And I told him that I was a firefighter injured in the line of duty and even though that is different than being injured during combat, trying to get your life back on track can be so difficult.  I encouraged him to keep on keeping on.  I also told him about my friends from Ladder 13 who died on 9/11 and how appreciate I was, as a firefighter, to the military for going out to protect us from further attack.  I told him how much the military means to the fire service.   The Marine reached out and hugged me.  He smiled, shook my hand and hugged me again.  He had a tear in his eye.  It was a very powerful moment.

I will never forget this cartoon that came out shortly after 9/11 that showed a firefighter buried in rubble handing a tattered US Flag to a soldier. Nearly 10 years later, hugging this Marine made me feel like this cartoon has come full circle…a firefighter welcoming back the soldier.

I was incredibly blessed to be a part of that moment and I feel incredibly honored to welcome two soldiers home.

May has come and gone.  It felt like a flash in the frying pan.  Between the traveling, a few cases of the sickies, and recovering from all of the ‘stuff’ that happened in March and April, we are trying to keep our heads above water.  I have a feeling that Christmas will be here before we know it.

We have crammed in birthday parties, photo shoots, gardening, a couple of plane rides, concerts in the park, school, a church picnic, pool parties, and hanging out on the couch.

I am hoping and praying for a low key summer.  We have a couple of smaller trips in the works but I plan on trying to catch up with work, the house, and with some rest (I hope I didn’t just jinx myself).  Catherine is going to be attending a new school and we decided to keep her on a routine, so she will be attending the summer session at this school.  It sounds like there will be a ton of fun activities at the school, so I hope she makes some new friends and continues to grow in her socializing skills.  We also have signed her up for Little Gym because she likes to tumble and flip.  Other than those two things on our agenda, we plan on spending lots of time at the beach, at the pool, and with our friends.  Basically more of this:

Happy Summer!!!

Every year, shortly after her birthday, we do a photo shoot of Catherine to try and capture her personality at that certain age.  This year we decided the beach would be a perfect place to take those photos.  We did manage to get a few good shots but Catherine is so enamored by the beach and with water that I wasn’t able to get as many as I would have liked.  She is too fast for me.  I am not one for posed shots because she doesn’t do well with that type of photo taking, plus sometimes she look too posed.  And since I am trying to really capture her spirit and personality, just letting her go for it while I try to capture it on camera is what I like to do best.  It is much harder though because most of my photos of her are of the back of her head!  Here are a few that are my favorite.

While we were waiting for Catherine, I thought often about how we would honor her birthparents.  I read many ideas from other parents and adopted children, many of them were very good ideas.  I felt that the best way for our family to remember her mother and father in China was to release a balloon with a written note on her birthday.  We have done this since her first birthday, so this was the third year we have done a balloon release.  This is the first year that Catherine released the balloon on her own.  Even though she doesn’t understand the significance of this tradition/ritual, it was important to me that she was the one to let the balloon go.