Flooding
Houston has been hit with an incredible amount of rainfall in the last three months, causing extensive flooding in the metro area. We were fortunate in that our house was not affected directly by the flooding - we did not have water damage to any of our personal belongings within the property. However, the homes and roads around us have been affected greatly. One of the problems I had to deal with for several weeks was the Highway 6 road closure. Highway 6 is a major highway that connects to Highway 10, which is another main artery into Houston and is also the highway that takes me downtown to my job. For those of you in Minnesota, it would be like having 35W close, and the entire city of Bloomington having to take France Avenue to downtown. Actually, that doesn't really come close to comparing, but just imagine if you will that France Avenue was literally the only route to get to downtown - there was no other route to take. The volume of cars trying to use one small roadway to get to somewhere major would be catastrophic. That is a very small comparison to what I had to deal with on a daily basis. There was just no other alternates to take that fifty thousand other people were trying to take at the same time. It was a nightmare that lasted for weeks, and there is still standing water on the sides of the roads to this day. Highway 6 is now open, but the ground is so fragile that even when we get a couple of inches of rain, the road floods over and closes and we are back to our hellish traffic nightmare. This has been my least favorite part of our Houston experience by far.
Carly Graduation
Our middle child, Carly Rae, has graduated from high school! Both of our girls are heading off to the same college to cheer in the fall. It's a junior college (a feeder into A&M) but they get the full campus/dorm living experience. I'm jealous as all get out of their college experiences! My college experience was quite different as I went straight into business school, but I get glimpse into what I missed out on through them. I'm so happy and proud of both of our girls.
Heading into Summer
Our community pool has opened and we are glad to take a dip and cool ourselves on the weekends. The puppies are doing well; Clara is still energetic and naughty, but it's a puppy naughty and she is already making great strides into settling down.
Carly has a summer job at Typhoon Texas, a water park in Katy. She is a cabana girl - that is, there are private cabanas for rental and she is a server. She makes tips as a waitress would.
Courtney has a summer job as a nanny to a cheer family. She actually spends a lot of time at Typhoon Texas as well as the family bought a season pass.
We are planning a trip soon to South Padre Island to celebrate Carly's graduation -- it will be our first non-cheer related vacation since moving to Texas. We're talking no plans, dig your toes into the sand type of vacation. Can't wait!
Until next time! :)
