Still No Power

While the rest of the world and most of Houston has finally gotten their power back, I am sad to report that we still do not have ours! We are still living at my Mom's house, waiting for the lights to come on, for our home to dry out and magically smell better. Don't know when that is happening.

The power situation is slowly getting resolved though. We've had an electrician come out for the last five days to work on our power outage. This includes installing a whole new circuit breaker box, power mast on the roof and rewiring stuff, etc. The box was so fried, he said we were lucky our house didn't burn down. Whew!

(Oh, and by the way, thanks to our awesome neighbors who have helped us in the recovery process of our home. Thanks so much!)

Since it took us a while to pull carpets out, the situation at our house is pretty gross and moldy. And its a wreck since we've had to move everything from the dining room (also used as a play room) into other areas of the house. Dark, totally disorganized and musty from lack of air circulation...ugh!

But it will get better. We are slowly working on things. The electrician is finished, the inspector has approved it, and the power company is coming this week. Hooray! And all in good timing since Emma has been asking, almost daily, if we could go home soon. I feel so bad for her. But I know it will get better. Right?

Back to Dance
Today we took Emma to get a haircut, finally. I've been hesitant to do it since her hair is so thin already, but it has been looking quite stringy lately. Her hair also falls into her eyes a lot, which my Mom swears is the reason why she is always falling down. I don't know about that. Might have more to do with double vision and balance issues, but a haircut couldn't hurt. So we gave her a cute little bob with bangs. See photos:

Above: Harlow and Emmy
Above: "Dance Pals" Amelia, Harlow and Emmy

Emma and I were able to go dance class today and see our friends for the first time in a long while. She did really well, and didn't fall down much until she was playing tag with her ballerina buddies. Tag is such a tough contact sport, isn't it? I was really happy that we were able to go. A little nice normalcy, finally.

Our therapy sessions (PT, OT and Speech) have now been moved to only twice a week, so that helps with getting her back into her old life. We are figuring out a school schedule and will hopefully resume it this week. She is still really fatigued and doesn't have much of an appetite, so that still worries me. The other thing is her sleeping habits, or lack thereof. She takes up to 2 hours to go down at night. Constantly tossing and turning, it's really heartbreaking and a little annoying, truthfully. Especially when I'm lying in bed with her trying to get her to sleep.

Chili's Fights Cancer
I totally forgot to post last night, so I hope you had a chance to participate. I'm such a jerk for not reminding everyone. Doh!

Today, Monday, September 29th, Chili's restaurants nationwide were campaigning to raise funds to fight childhood cancer. Yay! For one day only, today, they were donating 100% of their proceeds to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, the number 1 pediatric cancer hospital in the country, to help find a cure. That is a pretty big deal. When was the last time you heard of a huge national chain of anything contributing 100%?

We had dinner there and I was sad to see that it was really empty. I asked the hostess if they were busy today at all, and she said it was totally dead. I hope other Chili's nationwide were busier than the one I was at. Next year I'm going to invite everyone for a big dinner event to show our support. Doesn't a margarita sound nice?

Rescheduled Dinner
Finally, I hope you all were not too dissappointed at not being able to go to Emma's Benefit Dinner at St. Rose this past Sunday. It was postponed due to Hurricane Ike and power outages. We still do not have a date set as of yet, but it will likely be early November.

It should be a rockin' event. I've heard the auction is not to be missed either. I will update you with more info as it comes. Thanks for hanging in with us.