Our First Visitors at Home

Mackey Branning & Taylor
Greg Branning & Taylor
Angie, Lilian & Joy with Baby Taylor - thanks for picking up Grandmom Lau at the airport!Miss Joy and Miss Taylor

We are home!

Taylor & Mom came home today. We both had to actually get clothes on instead of hanging out in our hospital gowns. It was so good to be at our house, though we missed having the nursery nurses and staff helping us! Luckily Grandmom Lau is on her way tonight!

Looking up at her favorite guy!

First ride in the car - she fell asleep so hopefully she will like car rides in the future!

Taylor Jane Turner it is!

The birth certificate forms are in and the name is officially Taylor Jane Turner. We needed to see her to make sure and feel good about her name. I know we are biased as her parents but isn't she just beautiful!?! So content in Daddy's arms - her favorite spot (when she isn't eating!)
Here are a few funny shots - she is becoming more alert and doing really well.

Hey Popeye!

Flowers from Daddy for his girls!
A cake from Memorial Hermann
Balloons that came with a beautiful plant and teddy bear from Dow Chemical - thanks, Team!

She has Arrived!

We had our 36 week check up the Monday after Hurricane Ike and the baby was still in the transverse position. The doctor said let's get this baby here - next week! and suggested Thursday, September 25th in the morning. My first response was that I have a meeting that day! So we quickly changed our mindset that we had a few weeks to prepare and started planning for this little one to come in 10 days! I wrapped up work 10 days early and we got the nursery as finished as it would be.

During these 10 days she was moving all over - even had her head down where it was suppose to for the last ultrasound, but then moved back to her favorite position across my stomach under my ribs.

Heather at 6:00am right before the C-section - the ultrasound showed she was oblique (diagonal) but at least her head was down
Heather just before major abdominal surgery - right before they started, the doctor saw the baby move again - right back to her favorite position! They had to do some serious maneuvering (including forceps!) to get this little one to come out!

Her first few minutes of life!

Our sweet baby girl!

She weighed 7 lbs 10 ounces and measured 20.25 inches. We are glad she came at 37 weeks before she got any bigger!

Does she look like a Taylor?! We wanted to see her before we decided for sure! She is already looking to eat in this picture!

The first time Mom gets to hold Taylor about 3 hours later

Look at all that hair! We love it!

12 hours later!

She loves being held by her dad!

Her first visitors! Mason & Robyn Branning

We Survived Ike

It was a rough night Friday night but we made it. We lost power about 8pm and were ready for a very hot night when our power came back on at 10pm! It was such a blessing! We snuggled into our closet under the stairs about midnight when the winds started very strongly. I couldn't look outside - it was too scary but every few hours John would check outside for any damage. The morning finally came and the storm moved on by 10am. Our power flicked on and off several times through the night a but it never went out again. We knew how blessed we were to have power, but then when we talked to colleagues and friends around the city and even in Katy and realized our neighborhood was one of the few with power, we felt spoiled! 2.1 million out of 2.5 million customers lost power after the storm.

This is true "hunkering down!"

We had minimal damage - a few big limbs and lots of debris but that was it. When you see the amount of damage throughout downtown and of course in Galveston, we had nothing. One newscaster described the debris as taking a bunch of leaves and putting them in the blender and that is exactly what it looked like!

This is why I was so nervous during the storm - look at the height of our Cypress tree in our back yard! I was so worried it would be on our house!

We took a walk through our neighborhood and met more of our neighbors and visited with a lot of people. Some lost their fences and some trees, but our neighborhood wasn't bad.

Our tree lined streets are still tree lined!

John joined the neighbors cleaning out the cul-de-sac and our front yard. This is only part of the bags he cleaned up.

Church was cancelled today. Our offices are closed tomorrow so we will both work from home. Its going to be a while until anything is back to normal. The destruction is great in so many areas. We have yet to venture out into other parts of the area, but will probably do so tomorrow. Thanks for all your prayers and calls! We are doing well!

Hunkering Down

We have learned what this term means because that is what we are doing - hunkering down - waiting for Hurricane Ike to come our way. What does one do to hunker down? You bring in all your lawn furniture, you move your breakables from the windows, you take pictures of your whole house, you pull your 72 hour kits and extra water and blankets into the closet that you may have to sleep in....and then you wait. For 80 mph winds and 5-10 inches of rain - and we are 75 miles from the coast so we are not even thinking about "storm surges". We go to church with Dr. Jim from Fox News (the only PhD meteorologist in Houston!) so we've been getting personal updates through our ward email. There is a lot of uncertainty here.

Our lovely home - it has fabulous trees and a reason we love our neighborhood, the tree lined streets. Now we wonder what our neighborhood will look like in the morning. That huge Cypress tree in the back of our house is a bit daunting.... The winds are blowing pretty strongly right now at 11pm. And the eye hasn't even hit shore. We lost power for an hour tonight but luckily its back on and we have A/C and our ceiling fans again. We are enjoying it while we have it.

So what else do you do when you are waiting for a storm? You sleep in, take a long morning walk with the dog enjoying the "calm before the storm" sunny breezy weather, make a nice breakfast, attempt to clean out your inbox, take a few conference calls (with the rest of the country and world that continue to go on with life...!), bake a peach tart and decorate the nursery. It helps balance the underlying stress of what may be to come....

Wall Candy art decals for the nursery

Happy 18th Birthday, Riley!

Its been a big birthday for Riley and unfortunately IKE has made her day a bit more memorable in a different way. The malls, movie theaters, grocery stores, etc were all closed today. It was a ghost town all day around here - a bit eerie.

Brannings are dear friends of ours so here are a few pics of our cute Riley from our trip to Mexico.

Riley & Jordan at Playa del Carmen

Beautiful girl!
Peach tart for Riley's birthday

Texas peaches are wonderful and when I went through my fridge today to see what needed to be used in case of loosing power, I found these great peaches that I had bought with the intent to freeze. Instead we made a tart for our cute birthday girl since we had yet to pick up her present and there was no where to get one....

We have enjoyed some great desserts this summer with Texas peaches - homemade peach ice cream, peach cobbler and peach shortcake. Yum! And the Brannings being from Atlanta - they love peaches as much as we do!

A personality of her own...

I had a doctor's appointment today and found out our little one is "transverse" - horizontal across my belly. She is also estimated to be 5.6 lbs at 35 weeks so she is getting big! My OB stated that babies usually do not move into position from being transverse so we may have to schedule a C-section if we do not see her cooperate.

So we googled some tricks to get your baby to move. Here are a few of our favorites:

1. Shine a flashlight at the pubic bone and have the baby "come towards the light"
2. Talk to the baby and tell them they need to move - I told John he needed to have a "heart to heart" with her, that she would probably listen to him more than me - hasn't worked
3. Belly dancing, hula hoops, etc - get the pelvis opening
4. Ironing board slanting from the couch and you lay on it upside down to help gravity to get the baby to move
5. Swimming - we did try this one
6. Put ice where the baby's head is and they will move from the ice. We tried this one and sure enough she moved - actually very quickly as she flexed her body in protest. By the next morning she had settled in even more into a transverse, almost breech position. We know who is in charge.

So we have given up and will see what she does - naturally!

A Perfect Guys Trip

John had a great trip this weekend in NC visiting the boys. I have been grounded for a few weeks now, so I chilled on the couch this weekend in Houston and he braved Tropical Storm Hannah and picked up Jordan in Apex and they drove out to Appalachian State to visit Johnathan. Sounds like they had a fabulous visit and we have no pictures (Johnathan's dorm, his first college football game performance, his band uniform, etc) so I am bummed. He goes back at the end of October so we'll get you an update with pictures. Johnathan is working his tail off with a heavy course load as a music major but enjoying his new phase in life. What a fun time - freshman memories!

A Night of Culture

Our women's organization at church had an international event last night. We had a great buffet of dishes from around the world as well as many pictures, decorations and experiences shared. Joy & Lilian even came and danced a traditional Chinese dance for us! And many traditional outfits were modeled. I was lamenting that I could not fit into my nicely fitted Asian silk blouses and Florence Konneh brought me a traditional dress from Liberia to wear and cover my belly!

KelleyAnne & Florence

Lilian, Heather & Joy

Florence dressing Catherine with an African head wrap

Happy Labor Day!

No, I'm not in labor, I'm only 34 weeks though I have gotten quite a few comments that I look as if I could be. This week the greeter at Costco told me I looked like I was going to pop! Then yesterday at church a friend came up to John and said he was missing his basketball and thought it was under my dress!

Here is a picture of me heading out to walk Eben Labor Day morning~

HH Dow Academy Grad

John headed back to Texas after our weekend away up north and I stayed in Midland, MI for a 12 day leadership training called the H.H. Dow Academy. There were 40 Dow employees in the training from around the world and in various roles so it was a great cross-functional training. It was a great experience - a lot of work, a fair amount of stress (of course this is on top of your day job!) but overall I am pleased.

The professors and consultants were great as well as some exposure to Dow executive leadership, but the real benefit was having such a great team and strong project. After a few days of training, we had 5 days to tackle a corporate project and present your recommendations. We were asked to conduct the due diligence on a technology that one of the Dow businesses was looking to purchase. Have you ever heard or seen purple carrots? We learned a lot about them on this project!

My great, diverse, global team:

• Edwin - Country Manager & Shared Services Management - from the Netherlands, living in Dubai
• Johanna - Product & Market Manager, from UK, based in Dow Europe Headquarters in Switzerland
• David - R&D Management - Midland moving to Freeport after our training
• Andrea - Treasury Manager - Italian living in Midland, MI
• Don - Plant Manager - Freeport, TX
• Paulo - Mfr Leadership - Brazilian living in Freeport, TX
• Fiona - Medical Director, Dow China
• Me! - Market Manager, Houston

This was our "war room" where we spent many, many hours! I'll have to post additional pictures of our team when I get them.

More Lake Michigan

Here is a bit more of the charm on Lake Michigan - Harbor Springs is a great town on the lake with charming architecture, fabulous food (Tom's Mom's Cookies are a favorite since a family vacation when I was 14!) and great scenery.

Tom's Mom's Cookies - Best Chocolate Chunk Cookies ever!

To get to Harbor Springs, you turn left at the Whippy Dip - don't forget to stop for a cone!

Up North....

Dow Chemical is headquartered in Midland, Michigan - this is where I started my Dow career and lived here for 1.5 years before transferring to Houston. Midland is 2 hours north of Detroit, and 2 hours south of "Up North" - the beautiful resort towns along Lake Michigan. I am in Midland this week for training and thanks to the Dow shuttle (flies between Michigan & Texas once a day) John was able to come on as a guest and explore for the weekend.

Do you remember the old movie, "Somewhere in Time" with Christopher Reeves traveling back in time to meet Jane Seymour? That was filmed on Mackinac Island which is located between the upper pennisula and main part of Michigan where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron connect. This weekend we had a Midwest Lau reunion enjoying traveling back in time to an island that has no motorized vehicles. Everyone walks, rides bikes or uses horses to get around the island. Here are some highlights of the day...


View from the ferry coming to the island - The Grand Hotel is amazing!



Our ferry boat and our My sister Marilyn & her husband Joe Pike (drove from Chicago), John & Heather (flew into Midland, MI from Houston) , Stacey, Jason, Maya & Christian Lau (cousins in Grand Rapids, MI)

The other half of the group - John & Heather, my sister Marilyn, Glen, Jill & Matthew Lau (cousins in Toledo, OH), Loren & Joanne Lau (aunt & uncle in Detroit suburbs). It was so fun to get us all together! We did this trip 5 years ago with Loren, Joanne, Stacey, Jason and Christian was just a baby. It was fun to make it happen again.


The first thing off the ferry you smell is chocolate! There are fudge stores everywhere and the tourists are called "Fudgies!"




After sampling the fudge, you either catch a carriage or rent a bike and start exploring. We ventured out with a tandem and rode around the edge of the island (8 miles).


Joe, Marilyn, Heather & John - enjoying the view of the lake


The Grand Hotel - and grand it is! It has the longest porch in the world and is the largest summer resort (May - Oct). It is over 100 years old and is kept in mint condition. You have to be a guest to explore further or pay $10 to tour the hotel. The grounds are amazing!

Footage from Joe as we ride our bikes around town....