Well after the numerous "duds" that we've had all year, Hurricane Ike comes into play.

Let me just say that I've never been so scared in my life. My family was very lucky. We were without power for 1 day and we only had downed trees and flooding.

I will say that downtown was destroyed. The skyscrapers in Houston had all of the windows blown out.

Only a few blocks away there was total devastation. So many people were homeless and helpless.

We were driving through our suburb and noticed businesses with no roofs and no siding.

We were so lucky to have gotten out of this thing without too many problems.

We have all dealt with Hurricanes, being from the Gulf Coast, but Ike was definitely a bad bad boy.
 

Yesterday we visited the Shitennoji Temple in Osaka, Japan.   When we arrived, there was an older man and his wife who called out to me.

He said, "Hey, where are you from?" I told him, "From America."

He proceed to tell us all about the temple and the fact that the original temple was destroyed by fire and that it had been entirely rebuilt.

He was a huge flirt. He asked if he could take a picture with me. Then he said that he was trying to make his wife and my husband jealous.

His wife was a lovely woman and of course he and my husband joked around with each other about losing me to the other. Of course, there was no chance of that happening. Not only am I happily married, but he was like 65 years old.
This couple was so nice, much like most of the people from Japan.

On the way out, we met a Shinto monk. This guy was a complete card. He had the personality of Jim Carey. He told my husband that Nippon (Japan) was #1. Of course my husband retorted USA #1. Then he asked us to take a picture with him. 
 A very awesome day.

Today I took my 6 year old son, Jude, to the Vanz store because he just had to have some checkerd vanz. 
Okay so there were 2 guys that worked there. You know the type, the bad boy skater/surfer type.  The guys were extremely nice and helpful, but as they were helping me, I noticed that they smelled like grain alcohol.  I'm thinking-there's a party in the back room at Vanz. I mean how could they actually operate the store totally wasted? They actually did though-Weird.
So as I was driving home, I could still smell the smell. When I got home I realized that the effusion lamp fragrance that I had bought at another store in the mall had leaked into the bag- Hence the smell of grain alcohol. 

So my question is: If I could smell the stuff- Could they?

Do you think those Vanz guys think that I was one of those mom's that just can't cope and has to hide behind the bottle?

Okay, so summer has officially begun. It's a little overwhelming for me though. We're almost finished building our new home and we just put our current home on the market. 

Let me just say, it sucks having to live everyday of your life cleaning. The house must be ready to show to potential buyers at all times. When you have two small kids, it's near impossible to keep it clean.

Yesterday, my husband and I were sitting down to relax at the end of a long and not -so-relaxing Sunday, and we get a call that someone wanted to view it. We had to do some quick cleaning and get the kids out of the house within the hour. 

It turned out ok. We went and had Chinese food and took our time getting back.  When we got back, we sat back and finally got to watch the new Rambo movie. Let's just say if you're into those movies-IT'S AWESOME!!!!!!!