Goodbye Tree

I was out raking the front yard this afternoon when a tree guy stopped by to see whether we wanted him to take down what was left of our tree. We had planned to wait until GPa came down in early October, but since he will be flying in and thus will be unable to bring his chainsaw anyway AND because a lot of the branches needed to be cut down above their (Dan's and GPa's) heads, we decided that the roving tree man was a better bet. Compared with the price quotes that a lot of the BAMOMs have been talking about on the Mothers of Multiples message board, I think we got a pretty good deal, although it's just impossible to know. Suffice to say that the tree needed to be chopped, and now it is.

Our tree, shortly after we moved in in 2006.

It's sort of sad, though. We had sort of a "The Giving Tree" moment at the end, and asked them to leave a stump, so that we could always remember our tree. Even though we've only known the tree for the past 2 years, and even though it shed approximately one million tiny leaves in the fall that got tracked into the house, we really will miss it, for its shade and for the aesthetic. Our plan is to plant two orange trees in that corner of the yard on the girls' first birthday. The whole look of the backyard is going to change, but it will be good, I think. Goodbye tree!

The "first pass" at debris removal came by this morning. The various municipalities have hired a bunch of people to come in and clear the debris from the sides of the road. We (the citizens) have been instructed to make piles of organics (tree limbs, leaves, etc.), construction materials (shingles, fences, etc.), and household waste (i.e., the nasty stuff from the fridge that got gross when the power went out) between the sidewalk and the curb. The debris removal guys will come in waves. The guys from this mornings picked up tree limbs and things... very impressive machinery.

This was taken out of our front window (yes, I'm the creepy lady taking pictures from inside the house). You can see the big pile of limbs in front of the Paul Bunyan truck; that was from our across-the-street neighbor's tree, which crashed through their fence, but happily missed their house.

And in baby news....

Izzy can almost get herself in a sitting position by herself! Yikes! After we discovered her like this after the morning nap, we lowered the mattresses. My back is going to complain about it, but at least we're pretty sure that the girls won't be able to flip themselves out for a while :) They were pretty cranky today, but neither of them has a fever, which is great. We did get a cool mist vaporizor (yes, we're adding moisture to the air in Houston...), so we'll see if that lowers the production of mucus in our little snot factories that we call our daughters, or if it at least makes them more comfortable. Poor babies!