Snowing in Houston!!!

You gotta love Houston.  Yesterday it was 68 degrees, today it is snowing.  Here are a couple of pictures of the snow.

Risen from the dead????

Anyone who has visited my neighborhood knows that it is full of big, beautiful trees.  It is one of the leading reasons why I fell in love with the neighborhood.  My backyard was like my own private sanctuary, surrounded by big, huge oaks, many of the prettiest in my back neighbors' yards.  During Ike, the winds ripped two of the biggest oaks from the ground, taking a much smaller Dogwood with them.  As I surveyed the damage, I was perplexed why two big healthy looking oaks would be lost and the dead oak in my neighbors yard would remain standing.  It just didn't make sense.

Now, two months after Ike, in November I might add, my backyard has somewhat of a spring time feel about it.  The dead oak has sprouted  light green, spring-like leaves.   I guess something good has come out of Ike.

Pirate Festival

On Saturday afternoon my sister called and asked if Paul and I would take Andrew, a HUGE pirate lover, to the Pirate Festival hosted by the neighborhood elementary school's PTA.  When we picked up Andrew, he was basically still asleep from his nap, but he seemed very excited to go to the pirate festival.   We made it to the school, Paul bought tickets while Andrew and I stood in line for the Titanic bounce house slide.  We made it to the front on the line and Andrew decided that he didn't want to climb the slide because it was too dirty.  We walked the entire festival and Andrew had no interest in participating in any of the activities.  When Paul and I convinced him to try the Silly String wars, everything turned around and Andrew had a blast.

Lunchtime Entertainment

This is something I witnessed earlier this year and wanted to share it...

I met one of my childhood friends for lunch at Corner Bakery. We decided to take advantage of the beautiful, although hot, weather and sit outside on the patio. We found a shaded two-top table sitting right against the outside railing of the patio overlooking the fountains and rail line. I have never noticed the random chairs sitting out around the fountain, which were probably envisioned by some idealistic architect for weary downtown travelers and guests of our fabulous city to stop, relax a bit and enjoy the dancing water show. The reality is that most of these chairs are filled by homeless men. One of these such chairs was positioned about ten feet from our table next to a tree. As I was eating, I had a vision of a man kissing the tree in my peripheral vision. Not believing what I thought I saw, I turned to see that the shirtless homeless man was not kissing the tree, but rather he was licking the tree. He was not just licking the tree with the tip of his tongue, but rather more like the way a dog licks his, well you get the picture. The man proceeded to lick the tree for a solid five minutes. When he began picking at the cracks in the sidewalk like he was looking for grub worms, I decided it was time to leave before he actually pulled something from the crack and popped it into his mouth.

Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike rolled into Galveston in the early morning hours of Saturday, September 13th.  Ike caused major damage to the island, including taking out the historic Balinese Room.  Ike continued north into Houston and East Texas creating havoc along the way.  The eastern portion of the Texas coast took the brunt of Ike's fury, while Ike was more of an inconvenience to Houston and the surrounding areas.  On Wednesday night and all day on Thursday, Paul and I, along with my brother and sister-in-law, headed to League City to help my parents prepare for the storm, boarding up windows, packing pictures for a trip to higher, dryer ground, moving clothes and furniture upstairs.  There was a different feel around League City that day compared to the days preceeding Rita.  Rita was a panic.  To me, it seemed with Ike, like everyone knew, without a doubt, that the hurricane was going to hit dead-on and everyone was quietly working to take care of what needed to get done and get out.  There were no massive traffic jams on the freeways, no real lack of fuel before the storm.  It was really, very different.

 

Paul and I headed to Jodie and Randy's for a little hurricane party in the late afternoon on Friday.  My parents and Emily were already there.  Jodie and my mom spent a large chunk of the afternoon at Costco stockpiling supplies.  We headed over to relax, eat and enjoy everyone's company before the storm.  

Here is a video taken around 5:30 Friday evening of Andrew, Mom and I watching the clouds starting to roll in to town.

Our intent was to wait until just before the storm got bad and then head home, to sleep in our own bed, and to be here in case we need to sure up the house if anything happened.  Around 10 o'clock, things were starting to get a little hairy, so we decided it was time to hit the road.  We said our good-byes, despite Jodie asking us not to go, we were headed to the car, when Randy asked if we knew if we even had power.  Paul called our neighbor and found out that our neighborhood lost power about an hour before.  Apparently 

the transformer in our backyard blew, raining a shower of sparks down on the tin roof of the neighbor's shed.  The sparks danced across the shed catching the Magnolia tree in the adjacent neighbor's yard on fire.  Luckily, another neighbor saw this happen and called the fire department, who responded quickly and extinguished the fire. 

Well, given the fact that Jodie and Randy still had power, and we didn't, our decision was made.  I was really wishing I had listened to myself earlier and grabbed my toothbrush and blanket.  :)  At that point, I decided it was time to have a beer.  

We settled in and began watching the various newscasts begin reporting stories across the Galveston/Houston region.  I decided that if I were looking to get drunk, I could easily do it by drinking anytime someone on tv said the phrase "hunker down."  Wanting to have my wits about me should something happen, I refrained.

After an eventful night, which consisted of little sleep, we lost power at 2:30 am, I decided to give up on sleeping around 6:30 and join my mother and brother-in-law on the front porch, watching the storm. 

Jodie and Randy's street the evening before Ike blew through.

The view from their front porch as the sun came up on the tail-end of Ike.

Hurricane Ike - Part II - Surveying the Damage

Late Saturday afternoon, Paul and I decided to venture back across town to see how our neighborhood had fared.  We spoke to our neighbor earlier who had told us that it didn't look like we had any damage but that a tree in the neighbor's yard behind us had fallen into our yard.   Thinking of the small dogwood that was just on the other side of the fence, I was not to worried, and excited about the prospect of getting a new fence.

We pulled into our driveway and were quite relieved that the only noticeable damage were about ten small tree limbs.  Paul and I were doing the happy dance.  

We walked through the house, no damage, no broken windows, no leaks.  YEA!!!  

 

We then headed to the backyard to survey the damage to the fence.  HOLY MOLY!  What happened to my oasis of a backyard?!?!  Boy, was my vision of the small Dogwood tree through the fence wrong.  Instead two large oaks and the dogwood tree were down, and I think half of one of the trees was in the deep end of the pool.  The deep end of the pool was full of tree debris.  It stuck up several inches above the water level.

We decided that since the power lines were involved in the tree, we were going to wait and let the power company take care of the tree.  

Thinking back on the images we will never forget from the recent hurricanes, the New Orleans Heineken beer looter following hurricane Katrina is one of my favorite images.  Paul was going to reenact that image in our pool; however, after seeing the condition of the pool, he decided to modify it, by not actually getting in the pool.

That ended up being a good idea, when we went inside to take a shower, we learned we had no water pressure.  That gas hot water heater we were so excited about before the storm did us no good without water.  At that point, we decided to get out of town.  To Aggieland we escaped...

Hurricane Ike - Part III - The Escape and the Return Home

We headed toward College Station with Paul manning the phone trying to find us a place to stay.  My sister and parents reserved the last two remaining rooms at the Hilton.  From the time we had a phone signal, around Cypress until we pulled in to College Station, Paul was on the phone.  We pulled into the HoJo on the south side of town, just to see if they happened to have a room.  The gentleman working the front desk handed Paul a list of local hotels with a "X" next to the hotels he knew had no vacancies.  Paul started at the top of the list, and I the bottom.  Paul made it to the Knights Inn, one of College Station's finer establishments, when they stated that they thought they might have a room.  Before the woman could get the words out of her mouth, Paul told her we would take it.  I literally think it was the last room in town.

Let's just say, the Knight's Inn, is not high on my list of hotels/motels in College Station, but I was never happier to have a shower and air conditioning.

The next day, I met up with 

my mother, sisters, Jodie and Emily, along with Andrew and Allissa and took a tour of Aggieland.  We started by walking around Kyle Field.  A nice gentleman offered to take us into the club level of the Zone so the kids could see the field.

Playing on the ramps on the first deck

Emily and Allissa

Andrew, Emily and Allisa peering at the field

The view from the Zone

Andrew and Allissa held Yell Practice outside of Kyle Field.  Both it was a ton of fun to say "Howdy" to each passing person.

Toward the end of the day, Paul and I packed up and headed to Central Texas to take refuge at his parent's house.  They graciously let us come a hide at their house for a week.  I sure am glad because as we continued to check Centerpoint's expected return of power to our area continued to get pushed back.

We returned to Houston Saturday, a week after the storm.  We still had no power, the food in the freezers and fridge that we had forgotten about was now rotting and had melted and leaked all over the kitchen floor.  Let's just say the smell was horrid.  It took us, including my fabulous brother-in-law, Randy, several hours of elbow grease,  clorox, soap, vinegar, and baking soda, along with almost two additional weeks (one without power and one with power) to get the smell out of the house.  Our fabulous pool guy pulled all of the pool furniture we threw in the pool in anticipation of the storm, along with all the debris out of the pool.    Late on Sunday afternoon, a man appeared in the downed tree in our backyard.

He told me, "Don't worry, I'll take care of it."  Well, that's how I interpreted his spanlish.  For the next few hours, we sat in awe as his team of men methodically cleared the trees from the power lines and the ugly sheds in the neighbor's back yard.  When the last limb  was removed from the lines a cheer from the neighboring yards erupted.  We all knew that was the first step in reestablishing power.  Oh, I forgot to mention that our neighbors across the street had power for several days at this point.   Little did we know, that it would be another week before we had power.  Paul and I made a game out of coming home from work and trying to guess if we had power.  We would roll down the windows of the car as we turned in to the neighborhood to see if we could hear the hum of the generators our neighbors were running.  We never did get it right...  Call us optimists.  ;)

Paul Bunyan...  Where's Babe the Ox

We were very lucky, our families made it through the storm without injury or any real loss of property.    Please keep the people of the  Galveston area in your prayers as they have a long road ahead of them. 

Summer 2008

Whew.... How time flies.
We've had a quite an eventful summer. Here it is October and I haven't posted an entry since June 1st. I'll try and give a quick glance into my life.
Paul and I met up with my sisters, Jodie and Emily, along with my nieces, Allissa and Michayla, and nephews, Jonathen and Andrew, at Houston's newest park in downtown, Discovery
Green. The park is very cool and uncharacteristic for Houston.

Jonathen's 8th Birthday!

My nephew turned eight this summer. He celebrated his birthday with a Spiderman themed swim party at my house, with all of my family.  There was much fun had by all, including a rivoting game of baseball in the pool and a little Rock Band.

L-Town Girls Trip 2008

In early August, I met up with my childhood girlfriends for a trip to New Braunsfels and a trip down the Guadalupe river. The weekend started for me on Thursday night when Wendy, Shelly, Laura and I headed to the Hill Country and spent the night with Wendy's parents. On Friday, Mandy met up with us and Wendy's parents took all of us out on Canyon lake for a little relaxation and fun in the boat.

Mandy on the tube.

Elaine and Reid watching Mandy on the tube. Reid kept asking, in a very soft voice, "Mommy are you having fun?"

Shelly and Laura enjoying the water.

On Friday evening we met up with Jenn, Farrah, Jodie, Allison, Meredith, and Melanie and spent the rest of the weekend partying it up at the historic Gruene family home, floating the river, dancing at the River Road Ice House and acting like we were in high school again. We had a blast! I can't wait for next year's edition.

How many girls can you fit into one Tahoe? Can someone cue the Mexican music?

Farrah dancing at the River Road Ice House.

Jodie, Melanie and Allison.

Craig Biggio Retirement Ceremony

In late August Paul and I attended the retirement ceremony of the number 7 from the Astros line up. Craig Biggio is by far, my favorite baseball player of all time. I always enjoyed watching him play, not because he was flashy, but because he played hard. I've added a few pics from the ceremony.

Bagwell congratulating Biggio.

Jodie and Dad are right under the golden arches. Jodie's wearing light blue and Dad is wearing black.