Jackson Scott Babcock: Extreme Makeover Home Edition

As some of you know, Extreme Makeover Home Edition came to our little suburb. After Ike, we had some extreme devastation. Fortunately, majority of our area had insurance, floor insurance, and some cushion to bounce back. But others were not so fortunate...and some had their homes completely wiped out. Here is part of there story from the Blu Shield Extreme.com website:

In 23 years of marriage, Larry, 40 and Melissa, 40; have fostered over 85 children that other adoption agencies were not able to place. They have four biological children and nine adopted children. They include Chris (23,), Michael (21), Jose (20), Mikala (18), Paul (14), Faith (13), Hope (9), Justin (8), Jacob (4), Grace (4), Jeremiah (23 months), Mercy (22 months) and Cody (19) currently serving in the Marine Corps in Afghanistan. During the last 12 years, they have fostered approximately 85 children, but decided to start adopting after seeing that so many were not being placed in homes.

Due to water damage from Hurricane Ike, the Beach family home is unlivable and they are residing in a travel trailer on their property. Therefore, they have been unable to adopt additional children. But all that is about to change!! www.blushieldextreme.com

They deserved a home. A LARGE home!!

Some of my friends had mentioned that they saw Ty at the gym! Some people saw the cast out and about eating/working etc. Many of our close friends volunteered (a few of nearly 4000 volunteers over the past week!) and worked 'round the clock!

Adam delivered all the vehicles to the cast/crew! That was pretty cool! And the night that everyone got into town, we saw the bus driving down South Shore Blvd! Jackson was super excited! And he kept asking if we were going to see them "Move that bus!"

Reveal day was on Thursday. Like any other television show, they film segments and then splice them together in post-production. I was told that reveal would be around 2pm-4pm. Then I heard 4pm. Then I heard 6pm. I didn't hear any of the later times til we were ALREADY OUT THERE! IN THE RAIN!

I let Jackson stay home from school that day so that I would have time to get him dressed and Everson dropped off (for what I thought would be about 2 hours and one reserve of milk--wrong!) because it was just too cold to have him outside. Jackson and I grabbed some Chick-fil-A on our way down there (hmmm....milkshakes!) and headed to Kemah to park. Even though we live only a mile, we still have to ride the spectator bus to and from there. Jackson was super excited to ride on a school bus. I don't think he's ever been on one! I can't remember...hmmm...either way, he was sooooo happy!! We got there and there was already a mob of folks--seriously, like a million people. It wasn't raining at that point, and it wasn't even really cold. I thought it might get that way, so Jackson had on long-johns, a long sleeved shirt, a sweat, and his Jackson....oh, and hat and mittens! And I brought an umbrella just in case! Thank goodness I did! We ended up getting pushed back and moved around and finally, we found a spot (not in camera view) under a tree. At the time, I thought, "great, this tree is going to drive me nuts standing here for 2 hours." But then in started to sprinkle....then RAIN....and I had my umbrella up in the tree branches and we were warm and dry!! WOO HOO!! At one point, Jackson had to pee--the lady next to us said, "just let him pee on the tree! It's fine!" and a guy on the other side turned his back to block the view of others--and yes, my child peed on the "set" of Extreme Home Makeover! HA!!

We saw some friends from school--Jackson and Mimi are in the same class! So we jumped the fence and ran over to hang out with them for the moving of the bus! As we're moving, here comes a white. Out jumps a pretty girl and she walks off. THEN, AFTER she's past us, I realize it's Jessica Alba! I was about 10 feet from her, camera in hand, and had no clue! DAMN IT!! We were too far away to see anyone else from the crew :( BOO!

But when it was time, we were READY!! "BUS DRIVER!!! MOVE THAT BUS!! MOVE THAT BUS!! MOVE THAT BUS!!!" ......and there it went....and then in stopped....backed up....and got ready to do it all over again! HA! Jackson was confused. So was the crowd. The family was not there. It was all staged. Again, filming in segments! As soon as that bus took off the first time, we ran for OUR bus to take us back to the car. Remember the rain? Oh, the MUD!! We tramped through the mud and Jackson had a BLAST!! Who knew he loved mud?! I've never let him play in it, but hey, it was a special day and Mommy was in heels. There was no getting around it--she we just ran and sloshed....we were a mess!! :)