STILL POWERLESS, BUT FAMOUS

Update 4/20: We reclaimed our backyard from the branches and twigs today and had a little fun outside:


Fayte gives Daddy the high heat


Though her favorite catcher is Otis




Update 4/18: We're still powerless. We got the trees cut up and moved, fixed the brick and had the roofer come out and patch up the hole just in time because we received more severe weather and hail last night. Insurance has been giving us the runaround and we had to cut our losses and fire our electrician this morning because he has been ignoring our calls and downright unresponsive this week. Luckily, we've got another one who is ready to work this weekend at the fraction of the cost. Don't go with McBride Electric in Dallas! After he completes work, a city inspector has to come out before we can schedule the infamous Oncor to come out and hook us up again; not to mention the fact that we still have to fight for money with our insurance company and replace our entire roof. It's been tough being at the mercy of others who don't care about the well-being of a pregnant woman and her 2 year old, but that's the way things go sometime. We are happy however, about the support we have been offered. A fellow teacher even offered to start a fund for us, though we could never accept it. Fayte's been a trooper through all of this as well and she understands what's happened. Ask her and she'll say "That stupid storm messed up my TV!" Guess there's some silver lining to this after all.

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The media's caught on to our plight and we are happy that our side of the story is being told. Here's a story printed in today's Dallas Morning News:



Homes still without electricity because of Dallas-Fort Worth area storms
05:24 PM CDT on Sunday, April 13, 2008

By RICHARD ABSHIRE / The Dallas Morning News
rabshire@dallasnews.com

Desiree Le is feeling powerless.

Her family has been without electricity since Thursday morning's storms, when a tree fell on their northwest Dallas house, damaging the roof and an exterior wall and leaving a live electrical wire on the ground.

"It's one thing to be without power," Ms. Le said Sunday afternoon. "It's another to have a live wire down."

While Oncor was working Sunday to restore power to the last 150 homes affected by the storms, the Le family could hold the distinction of being the last to get their electricity turned back on.

Here's why:

Ms. Le said a repair crew came out Saturday and turned off power to the downed line in the back yard. But the crew said it couldn't restore power to the house until the Les had an electrician replace a damaged electrical box.

An electrician can't replace the box until a contractor repairs damage to the wall and patches a hole in the roof, which is temporarily covered with plastic.

And, finally, before any repairs can begin, an insurance adjuster has to inspect the damage, and Ms. Le, who is five months' pregnant, said she doesn't know when that will happen.

Megan Wright, a spokeswoman for Oncor, said the downed wire is a service line that carries electricity into the house.

"It is the homeowner's responsibility. The crews can't restore service until those repairs are taken care of," she said.

Ms. Le, a middle school history teacher in the Dallas school district, said she, her husband, Khoa, and their 2-year-old daughter have lived in the house about a month.

They moved to Dallas from Austin, where she thinks the weather is milder.

"This is our first natural disaster," she said.

Since Thursday morning, the Les have eaten way too much takeout, burned a lot of candles and kept coolers stocked with ice.

"It's like camping out in your own home," Ms. Le said.

Living without all the creature comforts has made her realize that people take electricity for granted.

"Even when my daughter just wants juice or milk, we have to run out and buy these little juice boxes," she said.

In the meantime, Ms. Le is hoping creatures don't find comfort in her home.

"I'm really hoping a squirrel doesn't try to get in," she said.

Ms. Wright said Sunday that of the 150 homes that remained without electricity, most were in the mid-cities and Fort Worth.

She said repair crews expected to have all service restored by the end of the day Sunday.

"We had about 250,000 outages at the peak early Thursday morning," Ms. Wright said.

No out-of-state crews were called in, Ms. Wright said, but Oncor had about 4,500 employees and contractors working in the aftermath of the storm.

TIMBERRRRRRRRR!

Last night at around 4 AM CST, we were awaken by some loud thunder. Just as we opened our eyes, we were treated to the greatest light show ever. Unfortunately, it was staged in our very own backyard. One of our largest trees, which stood at least 20 feet tall, was buzzed by a powerful lightning bolt. As it toppled over, it ripped the power line off of our house and sent sparks shooting into the night sky. It was pretty intense to say the least. While it looks like we'll have to add some tree chopping and some roofing work to this weekend's activities, we were relieved that the house did not catch fire. Unfortunately, we just went to the grocery store and bought 3 weeks of food and with the backlog of electrical repairs that the city of Dallas is having to work through, it appears as though we will be shopping again soon.


As you can see, this was 20 or so degrees to the right of being a lot worse.


Apparently, lightning will fry you from the inside out.


The power cable. The whole right side of the tree lost its leaves immediately.

We're thinking about carving out a bat a la "The Natural" for Fayte and her little brother:


Or perhaps we can fashion the wood into one of these bad boys:


By the way, do you like the category we've filed this post into?

UPDATE (4/12): Blogging remotely as the Le Unit has become a nomadic clan, traveling to where we can siphon power to charge our electronics for the night. It's been difficult, but Fayte's been a trooper through all of this.

The storm cleanup continues. It's day 4 and we're still without power. After giving us the cold shoulder until now, the electric company came out only to tell us they can't do anything until we pay for the damage to the electric box! A tree falls down and severs their cable and we have to pay for it. Would've been nice for them to at least tell us that 4 days ago so we could begin repairs!

So we had an emergency electrician come out and say he can't do anything until we fix the brick and the roof damage. Looks like it'll be at least another week without power. Oh and to make our amish lifestyle even more fun, we found another fallen tree on the side of our house. This one's leaning on our neighbor's roof:


Mother nature is no cheap date.

BREAKING NEWS: IT'S A BOY!

...and we're changing the name...probably. More to come late this week (pix), but here is the ultrasound. The first half is pretty much an anatomy lesson. The second half is where you can see Fayte's little brother grabbing his toes, rolling around, and relaxing with one arm folded behind his head. We couldn't be more ecstatic.

THE FIRST BLUEBONNETS OF SPRING

The Le Unit took a day trip to Austin this weekend and were treated to some of the first bluebonnets of the Spring at The Hills in Lakeway.







We also made sure to stop by Fayte's favorite store for this month's kids workshop. We were expecting to make a planter this month, but the Lakeway store offered us 6 different projects ranging from firetrucks to football shaped footstools! While we were hoping Fayte would pick the planter, she instead opted for the princess castle.




Despite hitting Dad a couple of times, Fayte actually had pretty good control of the hammer!






All finished!


The boys in red were also out there that day and look who was deemed honorary firefighter for the day!

A LE UNIT BIRTHDAY WEEKEND

The Le Unit spent the weekend celebrating the fact that Mommy is yet another year older. The highlight of the two days was definitely when Mimi and Papa took the fam out to Texas de Brazil! Though the sweet ring Aunts Michelle, Tania and KJ chipped in for was a close runner-up. Anyway, as mentioned in previous posts (see categorie: Good Eats), the Le Unit absolutely loves the idea of eating a calf's worth of various meats on swords, especially with the meat-and-potato craving Leighton/Olive. Seriously, quit wondering about the ad in your in-flight magazine and check it out if you've never been.


Mimi and Papa are taking us to Texas de Brazil!


Plowing through a softball-sized serving of shrimp will make any 2-year old lazy.


Got your trowels ready? Its time to get to work on the cake! Seriously, going to Home Depot gets Fayte excited like she's going to Sea World. She must be pretty sheltered.


"I see your ring, and I'll raise you one cake!"

And here's how the transaction went down:

EASTER 2008

As promised, here's a big update for Easter. This year, we spent the weekend in beautiful Austin.


Outta the way! I'm headed to Austin! Fayte actually spent the whole week down there with Ba Noi. Riding with Bert is just one of the perks.


Hey Hey We're the Monkeys...


...always monkeying around!


Cousin Hadley fixes Fayte's busted wheel.


Future art director in the making


Fayte decides that eating eggs is a much better way to enjoy them.


Easter Sunday in Lakeway


The Lovely Le Ladies


The Easter Bunny pooped candy all over our yard in Dallas!


Fayte does curls with the massive haul.


NOOOOO Fayte! Looks like we'll be pulling weeds next weekend.

By the way, on our drive back home to Dallas, we made a stop and check out who's back from 1988:

IT'S MAC TONIGHT!!! The Le Unit holds him dear to our hearts for obvious reasons.

OLIVE/LEIGHTON JUST KEEPS GROWING

Olive/Leighton is 16 weeks old this week and is roughly the size of an avocado now and in the next three weeks, he/she will double in weight! Plus there's no mistaking it. This baby likes to kick! Perhaps Olive/Leighton is trying to keep up with Fayte's Beckham-esque soccer playing lately. We've been lavishing praise on her and after all, the baby can now hear from inside of the womb.



Speaking of Fayte, here's some random art of the two Le Ladies jogging up our street.

WEEKEND FUN WITH FAYTE

Just some random photos of Fayte from this weekend. We're looking forward to Easter weekend. Expect a big update!


Going for a jog down our new street.


Working on the bike.


All future Longhorns in the house SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!


Whistler's Mother watches TV.


Cousin Connor came to visit.

And here's some video of Fayte practicing Tai Chi at the park:

FAYTE-PROOFING THE FLOORS

UPDATE: Just wrapped up staining the floor. If you're interested, we can set up a Web cam and stream a live feed so that you can watch it dry. Any takers? No? Oh well.



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As we mentioned earlier this week, we were lucky enough to find beautiful hardwood floors underneath our carpet. Unfortunately it wasn't so beautiful in every spot, which was to be expected. Otherwise, why would the previous owner cover it up? With furniture still waiting to be moved in, and with the clock ticking on when we have to be out of our old apartment, we knew we had to get to work. Here's the room with the carpet. Not bad, but give it a few months with Fayte.



We were warned that sanding your own floors is something best left to a professional. We read so many horror stories from fellow do-it-yourselfers, mainly tales about gouging holes into floors and losing control of the floor sander that we began to have second thoughts. In the end, we decided to bite the bullet and do it ourselves. After all, we did find free wood floors. Paying someone to do them would seem counter-productive.


Digging for gold....er, precious wood.


Said blemishes and imperfections.


We wear these all the time in case of SARS. We just happened to be sanding today.



And here it is completely sanded within 3 hours! Trust us. If you can mow a lawn, then you can sand your own floors. You can't tell from the photo, but the wood looks beautiful in its natural unfinished color. However, the whole reason we're going with wood is to defend against Fayte and her little brother/sister. So, we are going to stain it a dark walnut color. Stay tuned.

OLIVE/LEIGHTON, BOOTY-SHAKIN' AT WEEK 15

We've reached week 15 in the pregnancy and the biggest news this week is that Fayte is now able to feel her little brother/sister kicking and squirming for the first time! We are very excited about that. The baby has been just as active as he/she was in the 9 week ultrasound. We've still got one more doctor's visit before the next ultrasound in which we'll find out the answer to the big question, but in the mean time, please vote in the poll to your right. There are clues that pertain to some old wives tales over there, but here's another: the baby's heart rate the last two visits has been very high. Anyway, your guess is as good as ours.

In case you weren't around during the beginnings of this new blog, here is our first photo of Olive/Leighton:



And for those of you who prefer to watch TV:



As always, you can view previous posts about Olive/Leighton by clicking on "Baby" under the categories to the right.

THE KITCHEN'S OFFICIALLY BEEN PIMPED

After two days of peeling through four layers of wallpaper, it took two more days of texturing and prepping the walls to be ready for paint. We were going to wait until the weekend to wrap up work on the kitchen, but after a second day of snow prompted early closings across the Metroplex, we found ourselves with the perfect excuse to finish the job. Check it out:



Here it was before:


So, what's next on the list? Well, after seeing what happened to the carpet in our last two apartments and the subsequent loss of deposit money (thanks a lot Fayte!), we have decided to install hardwood floors. After the various bills and expenses associated with buying a home, we were not very happy researching costs of such a venture. We thought, "Why can't we be like some of those lucky jerks on HGTV who decide to one day put in hardwood, only to find that when they pull up the carpet to begin the process that a beautiful hardwood floor already exists underneath?" That seems to happen A LOT on those shows. Man we hate those people....oh wait....what's this?