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Never Forget- A Trip to Arlington

August 30, 2010 By Wendy Leave a Comment

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!


Filed Under: 2010: Memory Making, Headline, My Life As It Happens, featured

Ahh, the Bucket List

August 15, 2010 By Wendy

It seems like nearly every blogger is doing it right now and as if every single one of my posts have been set up this way as of late.  The bucket list…both loved and hated and yet right now, it’s the only reason I am putting up this post.  So here goes:

  • I’m still a bit shell-shocked with the latest firefighter fatality.  I can’t talk about it because I have to maintain confidentiality but let’s just say that this has been a defining case for me and the work that I do.  I have been thinking a lot about where I am with the Task Force and where its future is headed.  There is a lot of uncertainty, questions, and just ‘what if’ moments.
  • I have noticed that today marks the half way point in August.  We have had some fairly tough moments this month but actually the whole year has been difficult, so I’m just going to chalk everything that has gone on this month to it just being a nasty year.
  • Catherine finished out her summer session of school and in a little over a week she will be starting pre-k 3.  There have been some issues that have come up with her school and we are praying for a quick resolution.  We are actually hoping she will get accepted into another school next week.  We shall see.
  • Speaking of Catherine, all of the craziness we were going through at the beginning of summer seems to have subsided for now.   She isn’t crying or throwing a fit every five minutes, so I feel a bit less stressed about her right now.  She has however notched it up a bit with her going, going, going mentality.  She is always asking us to, ‘watch me!’ which just about drives me bonkers.  Even though she has always been a talker, it seems like now there is hardly any silence from that child.  I have to tell her at least two or three times a day that it’s ‘no talk time.’  She loves tinker toys, gymnastics, and swimming.  It’s too hot in Texas to do anything outside that is worthwhile other than swim.  Neither of us can handle being cooped up inside for too long.  I think the house would look like a bomb or hurricane hit it if we didn’t go out at least once a day.  Swimming has been our way of letting out some of the energy she has.
  • The stress of everything going on lately on top of Catherine’s endless supply energy has made me love an earlier bedtime.  I have always, always, always been a night owl, but I can no longer handle it.  I’m exhausted by 7:00pm.

  • I am not a huge fan of cooking, mostly because of the cleaning up part, but lately I have been wanting to try some new and challenging recipes.  My first foray into this cooking adventure has been a lobster bisque that I found on this website.   I think it turned out pretty darned good but I don’t think I will be making it again.  It took about three hours to make the stock and now my house smells like lobster.  I can’t get the smell out and I am not happy about it.  The other recipe I decided to make was a flatbread that I found off of the blog, Your Homebased Mom.  That was easy and good!  I would highly recommend it!
  • We are still in a quest to find the best cupcake.  We have tried a few more places and I need to do a post on the findings.  Most places have been a bit disappointing to say the least but there have also been a few surprises.
  • I’m still burned out with blogging because by the time I have a chance to actually write, all I want to do is go to bed.  I am hoping this new blog design kicks me back into high gear.  Thanks Diana for the new header!
  • I am still dreaming of a vacation but my travel season is about to start back up again, so I will take what I can get.
  • I cannot get enough of Molly the Owl and have dreams of one day owning an owl box!
  • And that’s about it for now!
Filed Under: Headline, My Life As It Happens

Texas Tornado

August 1, 2010 By Wendy

I promise that I am still here!  I can’t believe it has been a month since I posted last but honestly I have needed to step away in order to catch my breath.  2010 has been quite a challenging year for us and sometimes it feels like we are dodging one storm after another with barely a chance to recover before we are hit with something else.  I also never realized how exhausting a three year old can be.  At the end of most days, after we get her tucked into bed, all I can manage to do is drag myself to the couch and either vegetate by watching tv or reading.  So between life hitting us with some pretty big punches and a three year old that I like to call my ‘little Texas tornado,’ I can’t seem to get anything accomplished, much less writing a blog post.

At the end of a pretty busy first half of the year, I was hoping that I could spend my summer reorganizing, refocusing, and re-energizing some different areas of my life.  Well, it didn’t quite go as planned.  June was packed solid with meetings, business trips, and activities for Catherine.  Quickly June was gone.  In early July,  I was hit with a pretty difficult firefighter fatality case and I have been extremely busy trying to sort through the issues that have come up with that.  Also, July is when the annual fire school takes place at Texas A&M and I spend several days there teaching or attending meetings.  I usually call that my hell week because I drive back and forth from south Houston to College Station several times and that’s almost 300 miles round trip.   So, July has been pretty much disappeared in a haze of furor and today I am looking at August.  And while my calendar doesn’t look too packed out just yet, I can’t hold my breath that it will stay that way.

August is typically not a good month for me and my family.  I go into the month holding my breath and praying a lot.  If something bad is going to happen, it seems like August is when it will.  With 2010 being such a tumultuous year already, I feel pretty anxious about what the next 31 days will entail.  I know, I shouldn’t be superstitious, especially since I am a chaplain but sometimes it’s hard not to feel a bit of trepidation when memories from the past still linger.

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Since we can’t seem to get out of town to escape the craziness for even a day or two, I have decided to try and make the best of it with what little energy I have left.  A good friend of mine gave me the pool pass to her super cool swimming pool.  It is almost resort like and has a children’s pool with a frog waterslide and sprinklers.  Catherine and I have spent most of the days she is not in school there.  It almost feels like we are at resort somewhere in the Caribbean.  We have also been spending time in Kemah, at the library, at the beach, or doing fun things around town like visiting the dog show.  There won’t be much time in the fall to do activities like this, so I am trying to pack them in now.  It’s been such a great way to forget the three ring circus that has become our life, even if it’s only for a few hours.


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I have also decided to go on quest to find the best cupcake ever made.  Well…at least in the Houston area.  With my traveling schedule in the fall, I might hit up some out of town bakeries but most of my quest will take place locally.  John and I will be testing out cupcakes in and around town trying to figure out which one we like the most.  I hope to have the time to blog the experience, but we shall see.  Cupcakes seem to be such a great way to also find a little bit of normal in this abnormal world.

Here are the first three cupcakes we tried and the results:

IMG_9323This was lemon filled cupcake that I bought from our local Kroger’s store.  They have remodeled and the store looks quite fabulous.  The bakery is absolutely beautiful and I thought their sweet treats would be just as fab.  NOPE.  Taking a way the horrible lighting, this pretty cupcake was a huge disappointment.  It was dry and the icing was a yucky mix of whipped cream and buttercream.   I only cut a quarter of it to eat, and I couldn’t even finish it.  On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), this cupcake gets a 3.  It only scores that high because it did look pretty.

IMG_9328This cupcake came from Cinnabon.  Who knew that they have ventured into the cupcake world?  They make an awesome cinnamon roll, so you would think that their cupcakes would be just as good.  This one…not so much.  It was a bit dry but the icing was incredible!  I would give this one a 4 because it was pretty and the icing was good.  I wouldn’t buy it again though.

IMG_9327This one is also from Cinnabon.  This cupcake is supposed to be a take-off of their cinnamon roll.  Holy moly, this sucker was phenomenal!  By far this has been the best one we have tried.  The cake was not dry at all and resembled their cinnamon roll but just a bit cakier.  The frosting was to die for!  If you love this company’s cinnamon rolls, then you will most likely love this cupcake.  I can only give it an 8 though because I think that it resembles their cinnamon roll too much.  I would have liked to have seen their cupcakes taste this good.  It does rank up there though!

We have four others that we have tried but I will leave those for another post.

Anyway, keep us in your thoughts and prayers!  We need them!

Filed Under: Cupcakes, Headline, My Life As It Happens

Point of Grace

June 30, 2010 By Wendy


It seems as if my daughter has entered back into a difficult phase in her development.  She turned three in May and I noticed that she started transitioning into this tumultuous time a couple of months before her birthday.   While I understand no child is a complete picnic to parent, it seems as if I have an especially feisty, spirited child.  It has taken me this long to adjust to her personality and just when I think I might have it somewhat figured out, she throws me a curve ball.  The sweet, easy-going girl all of sudden sprouts an attitude and a temper to boot.  To put it mildly, most days are rough.  Most days one or both of us ends up in tears.  Most days I wonder if I was even cut out for this mothering gig.

Last weekend both John and I had a not-so-proud parenting moment.  Our church was having a family day at a local wildlife park.  We piled in a little tram that would give us a tour of the park and allow us to feed the animals as we rode around.  John, Catherine and I sat in the same section as the pastor’s wife and her daughter.  Now, mind you, Catherine has been to this place several times and loved it every time.  But for some reason, this time she was a bit more subdued.  She also insisted on crawling all over me, standing on me, writhing around and just all in all would not give me an inch of breathing room.  I finally made her sit on the bench with John and the pastor’s daughter.  She absolutely refused to sit next to John and started sitting on top of the other child.  I assertively told her to sit in the middle and to give this girl some room.  She shot me an evil look and shook her head.  I shot her ‘the look’ back and she still refused (I guess I have not perfected the look just yet).  I didn’t want to make a scene in front of everyone, but especially not in front of the pastor’s wife.  I calmly reached over, still giving her ‘the look’ and scooted her over.  She then conveniently started having a temper tantrum, which for her, is crying as loudly as possible.  Luckily she doesn’t throw herself on the ground.  I tried every which way to get her to stop.  I threatened, I ignored, I counted, I even told her she was going to scare the animals but none of these tactics worked.  And usually they do.  So, here we were stuck in this tram with a fit throwing three year old who would not calm down and John and I acting like total lunatics trying to get her to stop.  I was completely embarrassed.  Once we ended the tour, instead of having a picnic lunch with the rest of the group, we quickly hauled our still hollering child back to the car and took off back to the house.  I was fuming!

Unfortunately, we have had a lot of these melt-down moments lately.  For some reason they are really difficult for me to handle.  Most of the time I try to ignore the tantrums and the incessant whining but more times than not she gets the better of me.  I try not to show it, because I don’t want her knowing she is pushing my buttons, but secretly I start getting angry and frustrated inside.  And that is when I detach.  It’s hard for me to switch gears quickly like she can.  The weird thing is, in most life situations I can switch gears quickly, but for some reason with her I can’t.  Maybe because I have never been in the situation where we go from a 10 on the frustration level back to a 1 within a 15 minute time frame….several times a day.  It takes me a while to recover.  What ends up happening is that I get caught in a loop of having a good time, getting frustrated, feeling withdrawn, feeling okay, getting frustrated, feeling overwhelmed, feeling even more withdrawn, feel at peace because she is napping and then we start it all over again until she goes to bed.

I started thinking about how difficult this time with her is right now, and I began to notice a pattern.  It seems that a couple of months before she has a birthday (mind you we have only had three of them), she starts getting cranky and her difficult behaviors usually lasts throughout the entire summer months.  Last summer was horrible and so was the summer before that (but I chalked that summer up to her just being home).  Now here we are into our third summer and every…single…day is a battle.  I am thinking that it has to do with her developmental milestones.  I hear rumors from other parents that their children were difficult during these stages.  I have to believe that this is the same for her as well.  With this belief in mind, I have to do several things: fake it until we make it, allow both of us to have more breathing room, take more time for myself, give myself a time-out when needed, pray, pray, pray, and give more grace to both her and to me.

This parenting gig is way, way harder than I ever imagined it to be.  I am not perfect.  My daughter is not perfect.  My husband is not perfect.  I am trying to learn a bit more patience and to give us all room to fall.  I am getting lots of practice time right now.  I know I am going to need it even more in about 8 years when she enters her pre-teen and teen years.  Oh, I don’t even want to say that out loud.

Filed Under: Catherine Ellen Mei, Headline, My Life As It Happens, featured

I Hugged A Marine

June 24, 2010 By Wendy

Over the past several years, my church has been involved with the group Sentinels of Freedom.  This phenomenal organization provides assistance to military members who have been severely injured in the line of duty.   They give these heroes a 4 year ‘life scholarship’ helping them with finding/providing homes, education, jobs, and support services.

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.

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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.


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Filed Under: 2010: Memory Making, Headline, My Life As It Happens
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