Where's the Street View?

Last Sunday, we were in the middle of Harvey.  But Sunday wasn't necessarily a sad day in our neighborhood.  There were people walking through the streets checking out the high water.  The kids all went out to see it.  While the news showed just utter chaos in Houston and Fort Bend County (which is us) with the flooding and rescues, it wasn't that way right here.  Until Sunday evening when the water started to rise.   It got a few feet past the trees in our front yard, creeping up closer and closer to the house.  We would flush the toilets and our kitchen sink would gurgle every time. We watched the windows until 2 a.m. and were up at 4 a.m. to check, and again and 5 a.m.  We were incredibly grateful and blessed that the water never reached the house, but at the same time, Monday was much more somber.  We had a relentless rain all day long.  It never stopped for even a moment's break.  There was no one walking around the neighborhood anymore.  There were no cars driving.  We had a National Guard truck drive down our road, but we found out a soldier was just dropping his mom off at her house.  There was the hum of air boats all day long.  The kids saw a boat in the neighborhood, but I always missed it.  No one was sleeping well anymore.  Even the kids had dark circles under their eyes.  Henry couldn't sleep because he was worried about a tornado.  He would just cry when the tornado warnings would blare from our phones.  He was worried that either we would die, or that we would live, but his Legos would be lifted away in the wind.  It didn't help that the tornado warning would go off, then 15 minutes later it would go off again, extending the first tornado warning.  It seriously went on like that for most of Saturday and Sunday, and some of Monday.  So, Monday was just stressful with the rain.  The water level in the yard held fairly steady which amazed us with the amount of rain that was falling.  We knew the sewers and pumps must have been working constantly.  But then Tuesday came and we woke up to see the water level receding.  It was such a welcome sight.  For us, Tuesday was the light at the end of the tunnel.  The sidewalks were starting to show themselves again.  We still couldn't get out of our street because the water was still too high, but we saw progress all day long.  We even saw the sun shine again which we hadn't seen since the Thursday prior.  But what we also heard for much of the day on Tuesday were airboats and helicopters.  There were neighborhoods not that far from us that had mandatory evacuations and people were being rescued all day long.  Henry's tutor in CC had her family rescued by boat and an aerial shot of her home/neighborhood showed a lot of water.  Really, we have heard helicopters all week long.  A reservoir dam had a controlled release that flooded neighborhoods just to the north of us.  The dam was in danger of breaching, so they had to release some of the water or it would have affected a larger area.  However, the people who had to evacuate because of the controlled release were told that they would have 2-3 feet of water in their house for several weeks to months.  There is a neighborhood just to south of us that had a mandatory evacuation because of flooding.  It just is crazy to hear so much going on around us that we feel incredibly grateful and even slightly guilty that our situation has not been nearly so bad.

Sunday

Monday - note the brick and the rock (highlighted below). The rock is how high the water got on Sunday.

Tuesday

Wednesday - note the brick and the rock

What has also been amazing about the whole experience is the amount of help that has been extended to our area.  We still have three cases of water in our car trunk that we couldn't give away because the shelters were stocked.  It seems that right now people need muscle on the ground to tear out drywall and clear out damaged items from homes.  The school systems have all closed for two full weeks.  The libraries have been closed for almost a week and a half.  You never know what store is open until you pull up and read a hand-written sign on the door telling their hours or the lack thereof.  There are Facebook posts about which grocery store had milk.  The one I went to this evening had a limit of 2 milks/eggs/breads.  And yet, as much as these are uncertain times for this area, there is so much love extended to it, as well.  There are gobs of t-shirts being made with Isaiah 43:2 on it, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you."  In the end, the amount of water that fell on Houston was just staggering.  Hobby Airport received as much rain in a week as it usually does in a year.  The statistics surrounding the storm are astounding.

Something Harvey didn't destroy were mosquitoes, fire ants, and sod webworms.  In fact all three species spent the storm doubling their populations and have come back with a vengeance.  It is seriously ridiculous with the mosquitoes right now.

Todd was off all week as well.  I enjoyed that our classroom leadership doubled for a time.  Josiah would say, "I want Daddy to do handwriting and math with me."  Well, okay then.  Who am I to stop that?!!

In better news, the boys both took math tests this week and both received a 100%.  That was Josiah's first 100% on a math test that we can remember, so he was pretty happy with himself.  Henry was proud as well, but at the same time, he expects to get them all right.  He's just sort of that kid.  He does not like to miss problems.  Henry will also check his work over to make sure it is right before we grade it.  When Josiah is asked if he has checked his work, he will say that he is confident that he got them all right and doesn't need to check them over.  That is them in a nutshell.


Henry is just our little geography guy.  He loves maps.  He does the U.S. puzzle nearly every day as well as our Africa puzzle and world puzzle.  He spent time on his own quizzing himself on the states and capitals until he got them all right and he could find them all on a map.  Jimmy Kimmel went on the streets of L.A. a few weeks back and asked people if we should go to war with North Korea and then asked them to point North Korea out on a map.  It was quite sad to see some folks point to Canada.  I asked Henry and he immediately went over to Asia/China area and found it.  He keeps asking for the South America puzzle and a different world puzzle.  It is just his thing.  He loves it.  And to play into all this geography interest, he loves to mess around on googlemaps.  He can spend a good hour just traveling the world from the computer.  He'll go to a remote area in Egypt and then ask why he can't get a "street view."  He visits Senegal often.  He loves to travel "in" New York City.  He just loves it.  This is the Henry we love.  Then we call him to dinner and we get potty jokes and eating with fingers.  "Child, for the billionth time, use your fork!"  Such a dichotomy.

The kids finally got some outside time again this weekend.  The boys rode bikes in our circle.  Then when they were hot, they went to get juice boxes and walked arm-in-arm around the block sipping their juice and chatting each other up.  It was the sweetest thing because they just did it all on their own.  There are plenty of, "He called me stupid.  He hit me.  He kicked me in the face." around here, so that's why we have to take pictures of these moments.  They do like each other.


Josiah also made himself a "quiet spot" this weekend.  He decided that he likes the window seat...now that it's clean (from their loose papers, markers, books, scissors, balls, stuffed animals....).  He wrote a sign that said:

Josiah's quiet spot.

It began on 2017.

It changed the family.

[signed] Josiah Cockrell

If Josiah is quiet, I will say that will change the family, but we're not holding out hope here.  Caroline had the audacity to wander close to the quiet spot and I heard an angry tone, "Caroline, get out!  This is my quiet spot!  Stop it!"

For whatever reason, possibly because of Harvey, but we've made a couple of cakes this week.  The first was just your ordinary yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  But several family members did not want chocolate frosting, so here we have our "half and half."  When served, Henry got mad that Josiah and Caroline got two pieces of cake while he only got one.  No, Henry, they don't have any frosting to hold it together, so their dry top half just falls onto their plate.

And since it is now September and the pumpkin spice will be out in full force, we made a pumpkin bundt cake using one of the pans that Nana passed along to us.  It would have been prettier with confectioner's sugar sprinkled on the top, but we didn't have enough patience to wait for it to cool down before eating.

The boys had quite the conversation on the way to church:
Josiah, "I wish we could have Which Wich after church."
Todd, "You are going to have to make a lot of money, Josiah, for all the stuff you want."
Josiah, "Maybe I'll get a job at Jersey Mike's [Subs] or a pizzeria."
Henry, "And I'll be next door.... But you'll have to find one near NASA because I'm going to be a NASA engineer."
Josiah, "I could work in the cafeteria."
Life goals.
And that's why we'll be doing school on Labor Day.