"Evacuation complete!"

So, Ike. Thankfully everyone I have heard of is doing okay, some property damages, but all of my loved ones and my friends' loved ones seem to be accounted for and doing fine (at least I haven't heard otherwise in some cases). It remains to be seen how Galveston fared but hopefully with some major clean up efforts they can bounce back. It sounds like my friend Blair's family's beach home was in a pretty perilous predicament: you know the picture the media kept showing over and over of the beach house in Galveston completely up in flames? Well, her grandparents' beach house was directly next door to it, and the wind was gusting towards their house. They aren't sure yet if it sustained fire damage or not.
Somehow I caught the News 8 report on Friday that basically lied to everyone and said, "The storm is making a strong westerly turn! The eye of the hurricane will pass within 60 miles of Austin! The projected models are shifting and bringing it towards us! Save yourself! Run for the hills! (But not "The Hills")" It probably only was on the website for 15 seconds, but I caught it and told my parents. So we evacuated, literally running for said hills. We spent Friday and Saturday nights at the ranch, and while evacuation was, um, a little bit unnecessary and all, it made for a fun weekend.
Speaking of fun this weekend, we had the super fun couples shower for Baby Mehta! And her parents too. :) After coming out of evacuation and braving the 15 mph winds and cloudy, rainless skies, I had a blast at the party, visiting with everyone. So much so that I only took a picture of Erin's piece-de-resistance, the block cakes. Did I really not take other pictures, people?? I feel like I remember taking lots of pictures. But somehow this is the only one that made it onto my camera. Sneaky camera. Aren't the cakes fab?

Then we took some pictures of Reese yesterday, contained within a larger than life pot in the cactus garden. I guess that's the best place for her to be in the cactus garden....

See how SCARY the weather is in the Austin area?

Life is just a bowl of Reesies....


Here is our young maestra at work. She's clearly a talent of epic proportions, a child prodigy, much like Pablo Picasso. Instead of blue, however, she favors "pink" (which Ma Pam masterfully re-dubbed the otherwise "red" paint) and purple.

So, the lower right corner consists of "hearts", the upper right is "'mingo" (aka flamingo), and the upper center section is "high-fives," which are completed by slapping the brush on the canvas. Definitely abstract. Definitely expressive. Just not sure if it's abstract expressionism or not. No worries, it was fun!

That's all I got right now. Hope everyone's week starts off well....
(I am copying the Mehta blog and using a movie reference as the title--hopefully someone will get it!)