Busy Times

Well this past week was crazy for both Nick and I. We stayed at school late almost every night, plus we had events in the evening. Tuesday night we had a volleyball game at 9 pm. We played a great hard game and won!! That put us in fourth place out of 10 teams. Now we're headed into playoffs which start this Tuesday night. We play at 6:30 and we're hoping to play our hearts out and go all the way!

Thursday night I had band practice that went well. I am really enjoying playing the bass for Jesus! :) Today at church the leadership team announced that we have a pastor! He will begin next Sunday. We are looking forward to having him lead our church. Tomorrow night we are having a big get together to meet and greet them. It should be a fun time.

Friday night we had small group for church. I made dinner and I cooked maid-rites and down here no one has ever heard of such a thing. So then we started talking about Iowa and of course everyone had to give me a hard time about my Iowa roots. It was a roast on Cirsti the entire night. Everything I said was turned into a joke. Things were said about corn, potatoes (they thought it was Idaho) and hunting. I hadn't laughed so hard in a while. It was good to laugh with all of our friends.

We're still looking forward to Thanksgiving...only 4 more weeks! :) Can't wait to see everyone!

Good News!

I got a phone call last night from my sister-in-law, Heather. She told me some great news about their baby! She had a Dr.'s apointment on Thursday and they were not expecting to find out what the sex of the baby was, but the baby ended up being in the right position. The Dr. told them that it's a boy!! :) Nick and I are so excited for them and that we will have a 2nd nephew. Now Austin won't be the only boy!

Tuesday night we started our volleyball league again since the hurricane hit. We won 2 out of 3 of the games and we had so much fun. I felt like the entire team played really well together! If we win all of our games next Tuesday, there is a good chance that we will make it into the playoffs!

Nick and I went and played racquetball last night and I beat him twice. It was so worth it because I was injured! We had a volley going and the ball was against the left wall and I ran over to return it. Well, I swung and missed like a moron, and the ball smashed me right in the face. Luckily I was wearing my goggles because it hit me in the eye/cheek. The first 3 seconds I was laughing at myself for missing, and then the pain hit and I realized that my cheek felt like it was so swollen and bruised. The glasses had dug right into my cheek under my eye. I am a pretty tough person and I don't cry a lot, but I just couldn't help but cry. I felt like such an idiot. Nick was so sweet and took good care of me though. We took a break and thankfully there was no mark. I got back in and played so hard and beat him. :) It was great!

We also found out this week that we will be going to Iowa for Thanksgiving, Iowa & Indiana for Christmas, and Indiana for Spring break. :) That was such great news! I have so much to look forward to. Also, Heather and Joe will be coming down to visit us in the begginning of December. They were supposed to come 2 weeks after Hurricane Ike, but with so much damage and nothing to do down here, we decided it would be best for them to come in December. I love spending time with family and so it will be great to see everyone! Last year we only went back at Christmas, so I think it will be so nice to go back for Thanksgiving and Spring break. I'm not looking forward to the 17 1/2 hour drive, but it will be so worth it!

Back to Normal

Well, it's hard to believe it's October. I feel like we did not even have a September this year because life was so crazy and out of the ordinary. I'm just so glad things are back to normal for us. A lot of families are still struggling. Several students at my school are homeless now which makes for difficult times of living in campers/tents/hotels for the next several months until they can rebuild.

We had our first week back to school this past week and it was nice to be back. However, the week went by so slow! I didn't think Friday would ever come! It turned out to be a pretty ok week and not as stressful as I originally thought it might be. Nick had a good week too. His school sustained a lot of damage and had both of their gym floors ruined from losing the roof. Despite that, school went on and things are getting back to normal there as well.

Tonight we enjoyed a wonderful concert put on by Nick's school's orchestra program. They brought in Mark Wood who is in the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. He worked with the kids and they performed an amazing evening of rocking out like rock stars using their string instruments. He was amazed at the skills these intermediate school kids have. They sounded awesome! He rated Nick's school as being in his top 10 favorite schools and he usually only goes to high schools to work with orchestras.

Tomorrow, Nick and Matt are headed into the city to watch the Texans and Colts play. We're hoping the Colts can pull off a win! I am not able to go because Matt got the tickets through a friend and there were only 2. I will be watching at home though and looking for them on TV.

Hurricane Ike- Day 12- Sunday 9-21-08

Happy Birthday Nick!!

We woke up today around 8:45. I got in the shower and took a quick cold shower. As soon as I turned the water off, Nick shouted, “The power’s back on!” Oh what a wonderful feeling! I was thrilled!! We stood right by the vent just letting the cool air blow on us!

We went to church which was held outside at a park along with a BBQ. It was a nice time, but not very many people showed up. I was anxious to get home and clean the apartment up a little bit.

When we came home, I cleaned, did laundry, and enjoyed having a nice cool apartment!! It really made us appreciate how much we depend on electricity. We plugged in the Wii and played that a while over the afternoon and got the computer up and going. We were starting to feel a little more connected to the world finally!

The one thing I wanted for my birthday was to go out to dinner at Landry’s which is located on the Kemah boardwalk. I was really disappointed to learn that it had a lot of damage. Nick offered to take me out for my birthday on his birthday. I had to pick my next favorite place to eat which is Saltgrass. I had a delicious steak dinner! Thanks Nick!

Monday- 9-22-08

I made Nick’s birthday cake today. It was so nice to be able to cook again! We are so glad to have power!!

Hurricane Ike- Day 10 & 11 - Friday 9-19-08 & Saturday 9-20-08

We woke up this morning and our neighbors had brought home a generator and they said they wanted to share it with us. We were pretty excited because we thought we could at least hook up the internet or possibly the TV. Well, once we plugged into it, we discovered that the cable and internet was not working. What a big let down! Oh well, I had a book to enjoy reading.

In the afternoon, we talked to Brad and Linda and they invited us over to do laundry. Nick ended up helping Brad around the house to cut down some branches and clean up. Linda and I did laundry and entertained the kids by walking to the park. They invited us to stay for dinner and we had a wonderful warm meal. We also enjoyed the air conditioning since it warmed up today.

We came home around 9 that night and we noticed that there were lights in the front half of our apartment complex. It turned out that the front half had power, but the back half (where we live of course) did not have power! It was difficult to take that in because it felt like it was so close, yet so far away. The apartment was pretty stuffy as today got a little warmer, but we were still able to get some sleep.

Saturday
Today was even hotter! We felt so incredibly anxious all day to get power so we could cool off. We ended up going to the POD to get some ice and they gave us some MRE’s also. We decided to go somewhere cool for lunch and we were tired of feeling so gross that we went to Olive Garden. We had a very nice time there and it was so cold inside I got the goose bumps!

We went to Wal-Mart and bought brats and chicken breasts to eat at home as well. We kept them in our cooler filled with ice. We then went over to Matt and Amanda’s apartment because they were celebrating Matt’s birthday a week early. We had cake and ice cream and visited with some friends.

We came home to a hot and humid apartment. We did not get much sleep tonight at all!

Hurricane Ike- Day 9- Thursday 9-18-08

Well, Nick’s tub idea did not work and the water was still unbearable. Cold showers again and no power.

Today we went to two different Wal-Marts, Target, and Academy to look for lanterns to help us see better at night to read besides using candles. We never found any lanterns, but I did find a clip on light to clip onto my book.

Nick and I also have been looking into buying a Wii since this past Christmas. We have never been able to see one at all at any store. While we were in walmart, we were just enjoying time out of the apartment and in some air conditioning. We were walking around just looking at things and all of a sudden I had a thought come to my mine. Surely no one would be looking for a Wii right now since everyone is thinking about this hurricane and nobody has power. I wondered if they had any, so we went back to electronics and there were 5 boxes of Wii’s!! So, we got one for our birthday presents! YAY! The torture now is that we have no power so we can’t even play it!

This afternoon, Matt called and asked us if we would like to help clean up some houses and to carry tree branches away. We went down by Kemah to a couple’s home who had about 2 feet of water in it. Nick helped carry branches away and left to go help other homes as well with the guys. Amanda and I helped the lady on the inside by packing up all of her glass collectible items in their home. It was a lot of work, but I was so glad to help out in any way I could. They were staying with their son and his family, but they had to throw most of their things away. All of their furniture was ruined. It was pretty crazy, but they were very thankful for all the help.

For dinner, Nick and I decided to go to our favorite Mexican restaurant, Don Pico’s! It was so good! We enjoyed delicious chips and salsa, and chicken fajitas. We also found out that school does not start up until the 26th for teacher and the 29th for the students. We have a whole other week of no school! We thought about going up to Iowa to visit family, but we had so much to do here and with such short notice, we decided to not make the trip.

Hurricane Ike- Day 8- Wednesday 9-17-08

Today we woke up with no power again but with cool weather. We also had to take another cool shower. We went to go get some ice at a POD just down the road from us but there was a huge long wait so we decided not to wait. We then saw a sign that said “Free ice and water” at CVS with no wait at all. It was nice to get some more ice to put in the cooler to keep the drinks cold.

We played some games with our neighbor’s little girls to help the time pass by. I also did some more reading.

We found out today that one of our church’s pastor’s home burnt down. There was something wrong with the wires in the house and running the generator caused a fire. Because there was no water running where he lived, the house burnt from top to bottom because the fire fighters could not fight it. His family was not home at the time which was a blessing. He was also able to grab the family photos and got out in time. Unfortunately, the family dog did not make it out of the house. That was some very sad news.

Today was the day that our neighbors offered some MRE’s (Meal Reading to Eat from the army) for us to eat for dinner. I had beef pot roast with crackers and chocolate peanut butter. For dessert I had carrot pound cake. It was surprisingly really good. Nick had chicken fajitas, he wasn’t too thrilled about them but they were ok.

Nick could not stand the cold showers, so he was thinking that if he filled the tub with some water and let it set over night, it may heat up a little bit or at least come to room temperature. We’ll see how it turns out in the morning. Our Asian neighbor’s below were talking so loud that it made it difficult to fall asleep since all the windows were open.