Hurrican Harvey

 I was finishing up my second week of work when all of a sudden (well maybe not suddenly) school was cancelled and grocery stores were packed full of people preparing for a hurricane.  Hurricane Harvey was expected to hit sometime Friday night, August 25th and the city of Houston (and out skirts) were in a panic.  B and I made the necessary preparations and stood in a 2 hour line at HEB for some water, milk, bread, and eggs along with hundreds of other people.  We hadn't experienced a major store before so we maybe were a little naive about the damage a category 3 hurricane could do.  It wasn't the biggest storm, but it hit land and then stalled dropping trillions of gallons of water on the state. 

Friday, August 25th all schools and most businesses were closed.  Logos closed and the kids hadn't even started school yet but they had meet the teacher from 11:00 am - 1:00 pm.  I worked the PTO table and B brought the kids to the school so we could meet their teachers and bring their school supplies.  Little did we know, that school wouldn't start on Monday like regularly scheduled. 
Friday evening we could hear the wind pick up and it started raining.

The kids brought us breakfast in bed

 Pretty much all night long, the tornado warnings went off on our phones every hour or so.  A few tornadoes touched down in Missouri City, but not near us in Richmond.  Saturday morning we woke up to our power still on, but more rain.  It rained all day Saturday and Sunday.  Church was cancelled and many places were still closed.  HEB and Kroger opened up for just a few hours each day.  Over the weekend is when the evacuations started happening.  Online postings and over the news, different areas and neighborhoods were under mandatory and voluntary evacuation.  Greatwood, the neighborhood next to us, had sections under both types of evacuations and even the front part of Canyon Gate was under voluntary evacuation.

 Marcus called us and told us we could come to College Station for the weekend.  Their kids' were out of school Monday due to the storm.  We thought about it and prayed about it and felt a peace about staying put.  Our home wasn't in the evacuation zone and we don't live in a flooding zone.  We live near the Brazos River, but no close enough to evacuate.  Saturday came and went and Sunday came and went.  More rain and the flooding started in Houston.  School was cancelled all week!  All Week!  The first day of school was cancelled and moved to September.  It was crazy.  The rain finally stopped on Tuesday and that's when people started getting out and trying to see the damage.  During the days on Sunday and Monday, there were a lot of rescues and people being brought to shelters.  One of my friends, Ally, from CG, her home started to flood so she left the house with her two kids on a dump truck that was driving through rescuing people.  Our friends from our Bible Study, TGIW, were rescued on a boat since their apartment building flooded and they couldn't get out by car.  The flooding was terrible and all over in parts of Katy and Houston and Richmond. 

Bayou in our neighborhood

Dinner and a movie

How we passed the time

I definitely felt guilty at times because we were very comfortable in our home and it was like an extended vacation with B home with us.  We walked Cooper every day to check on the bayou in our neighborhood.  So since we were okay and our house was fine, we decided to volunteer at a shelter.  We went to Terry High school and volunteered a couple hours there helping serve food and our kids played with other kids.  Then we went to Kroger and bought groceries to make food for the shelters.  We brought breakfast casserole and lots of spaghetti to the 2 shelters for the people.  We wanted to do more, but not exactly sure what we could do.  Our kids went through their toys and picked some out to bring to the shelter for the kids there.  It was heartbreaking to see families and couples with only the clothes on their back and not knowing what their house looked like.  We wanted to do more.  I wanted to bring all those people home with us, but we couldn't.  Our friends JuJo had to evacuate so they did come over and stay with us.  Since we are good friends, and they've lived with us before, it was easy to have them come back.  They have a dog, Jasper, that gets along well with Cooper and all our kids have a great time playing.

Juliette with us

kids in the culdesac

Birthday girl turning 2

  They stayed with us through the weekend and that brings me to September 1.  September 1 was Jenneive's birthday.  I baked her a cake and we all sang HBTY.  Moana is her favorite so our two families popped popcorn and watched Moana together for her party.  It was a lot of fun and sweet memories were made. 

Eventually I went back to work and had to hire a babysitter for the kids.  They returned (or should I say started) to school on September 11th.  What a crazy 2 weeks from Hurricane Harvey, but the damage done was just unbelievable.   Houston Strong is the new motto around here and everyone is willing to lend a helping hand.  The Astros won the super bowl and of course everyone jumped on the Astros bandwagon (we did at least).  The Houston Dynamo even made it to the playoffs.  It's weird how a tragedy can bring about community.  God is good!