Hot & Humid in Houston: Winter Freeze and Burst Pipes

We have been having a real winter here. It has been much, much colder than the past two winters. When we first moved here, we (the kids and I) missed the snow we got out east, but now that we've been here for a while we've grown soft and miss our 60-70 degree winters. On Tuesday we had freezing rain and temperatures in the 20's. Basically, ice on the roads shuts everything down because every major highway is just that - high. They're loaded with overpasses going over cross streets below. The entire time we've been here I always thought it was such a waste of money to have "Bridge Freezes Before Roadway" signs before every bridge/overpass. And yet, it finally happened. All the schools were closed Tuesday and Wednesday because of icy conditions. Wednesday morning we woke up to a burst sprinkler pipe spraying water on the side of our house. Todd went to turn it off, but the turn off area was cracked, so he turned off the water shut-off in the house, and still the sprinkler sprayed. So, he went to the street shut-off and shut off all the water to our house and it finally subsided. But that meant we had no water to our house. Over the next 36 hours we became very cognizant of just how beautiful running water and flushing toilets were. We appreciate them very, very much. Todd called a man at 8:30 a.m. that Wednesday morning and we were already 10th on his list of busted pipes for the day. So, he got another company to come out the following day and he fixed it for us. We learned that plumbers get paid handsomely but we are very grateful for their skill set.

A busted pipe makes a lot of ice.

The school systems were all shut down for snow and ice, but that doesn't mean the home schools take a break. Our kids are not a fan of that part of homeschooling. It does give order to our days, though, so it's good to keep on going. Josiah began a new grammar curriculum this year that I have loved. He's learned so much about parts of speech and how to write well, but on his tests he has consistently been getting his vocab words wrong. There will be two words listed and he has to write if they are synonyms or antonyms. He usually misses about 1/3 of them. What has happened is that we usually do grammar last each day, and writing vocab words is the last thing he does in grammar. So, by that time I have left him to look the words up in his dictionary and write out the definitions by himself. Since he was missing them, I thought I better check to see what he's writing. And the problem became quite obvious. He was using the dictionary to define the first word, but then he was using Josiah's best guess to define the remaining three words. For example, this week, he wrote:
"cranky - means you need more sleep"
"grouchy - sort of like cranky"
Not exactly what was written in Merriam-Webster's.

Josiah did surprise us one morning with cartoon pictures of each member of the family. We really liked them. He had a paper to go along with each that had our name, birth date, signature, and a description of ourselves. Todd got, "A nice fun loving father and a nice strong man who wants his children to grow up in the name of the Lord." For mine he wrote, "A woman who teaches with attitude and strength and very stern at her teachings." He didn't mince words there. Thanks? Josiah did apologize to Todd for giving him too much hair.

How he spelled his own name wrong is sort of baffling.

Both Caroline and Josiah had karate belt tests this Friday. Henry and I were off at Awana, so we missed them, but Todd took lots of pictures for us. It was Caroline's first belt test and she was pretty nervous going into it. She did well and even broke her boards on her first try. She had to break one with each foot, which isn't easy. Her instructor exclaimed, "Caroline! You're strong!" That's what having two older brothers will do for you - she can hold her own.