Get your Fat Pants Ready…

This year Clayton had to work on Thanksgiving, so Tess and my parents ventured out and watched the parade. Tess had never seen the parade and it had been since I was little. We had a lot of fun but it was cold. We thought that we had arrived downtown in plenty of time but there was a ton of people already lined the streets. I actually found a couple that had spread out on the curb and I asked them to move over and Tess and I were able to sit on the curb. She loved watching all the floats and it was a really good morning.

There was a firefighter band that was pretty cool and Tess enjoyed their music.

We headed over the Clayton’s station to say hello after the parade. We stayed for a minute and then headed hope to start cooking. While mom was finishing up the cooking Tess and I enjoyed some snapchat fun. This child loves snapchat.

On Friday we ventured on our annual trip to Lampasas. Clayton got off work and we got a lat start so we got in a little later than normal. The weather was awesome and we spent most of the time outside as much as possible. Tess loves the ranch and it is the one place that she spends all her time outside from sun up to sun down and we have to tell her that its time to come inside to eat. She loves spending time with her family and looks forward to this weekend every year. It’s Clayton’s favorite weekend also.  

When we got back we decided to put up Christmas. We were going to be away for Christmas day so our decorations were very limited this year. I will say that the tree is a hit though. Tess and Rosy love the tree and I love that hey  love it.

Its fall in Texas, You know what that means? Nothing, absolutely nothing! It’s still 95 degrees outside!

The only way we know that it is fall around here is the date on the calendar, the weather doesn’t change and it sometimes actually gets hotter. Clayton was promoted to Engine Operator earlier in the year but had his promotional ceremony in September. The city through it together and didn’t send out the email till a week before. I convinced him to go and both of us took the morning off and headed into town to attend the ceremony. My parents also attended the ceremony and watched Clayton receive his certificate and walk across the stage. We took a couple of pictures and we decided to skip the reception and eat lunch instead. After lunch we all headed our separate ways, Clayton and I headed back to work and my parents headed home. I am glad he attended the ceremony, I will always try to recognize his accomplishments.

Throughout the years we have attended many Astros games, we have seen the guys through their LAstros years and this year we were excited to be a part of their winning season. We even were able to attend a post season game. We went with my parents to an ALDS game and watched the Astros beat the Red Sox. Tess even got into watching them at home and could tell from the score whether or not we were going to win.

That same weekend we headed out to Dewberry farm with the Hughes Family. Tess loves playing with the girls and we enjoy spending time out with Olivia and Allen. It was a hot Sunday and when we go back we need to choose a cooler day. The girls had fun running around doing all the activities.

Tess even got the hang of the rope swing and didn’t want to leave, there was one swing and the girls were taking turns. She was a little apprehensive at first but once she took that first swing she was hooked and all she wanted to do was swing.

 There were a couple of slides but her favorite was the slide mountain. The girls were able to go as many times as they wanted and it wasn’t actually that crowded at the time we were there. We let them slide a couple of times and then we headed to the next thing.

One of their big attractions is the Candy Cannon. They sound the alarm at different times throughout the day and then they shoot candy out of the cannon. Clayton was pretty excited because the Cannon was an old firetruck and the alarm was an old friction alarm. The girls got a couple pieces of candy.

We did one more activity on the way out and then we called it a day. Tess had a lot of fun and was glad that we were able to go.

In our house when fall time rolls around it is time to start getting ready for Halloween. Clayton has been wanting to do a haunted backyard for years and he finally has enough stuff that it would work. He had a couple of neighbors that agreed to help and everything was planned out, except the weather. We started looking at the weather on Sunday and it was looking like rain but we were going to wait until it go closer. I took a half day on Halloween to help set-up and we realized it was going to be a rainy soggy Halloween night. We decided to have a Haunted garage instead of backyard and everything turned out great. Everyone that came by loved the idea and enjoyed themselves. Some high school girls were scared so much that they ripped down the black covering. Tess loved the fact that everything was decorated and talked about it for days. She dressed up as Sally from Nightmare before Christmas. Overall it was a good Halloween this year.

To round out our fall we attended the Keith Elementary School Sock Hop. It is an annual fundraiser put on by the school and the kids get to dress up in the best 50’s gear and play games and win prizes. Tess wore a poodle skirt that my mom made for me when I was younger. We had a lot of fun playing games and Tess enjoyed a night out amongst her friends.

Harvey…

Who knew one name could cause so much damage. Harvey made landfall three separate times in six days but the biggest issue was when it made landfall it rapidly weakened and slowed down to a crawl. The weather channels had been watching the storm and had projected the weakening and the slow creeping across the state but no one could have prepared for the amount of rain that this storm dropped on Houston and the surrounding areas. The city received at least 30 inches of water and some places got up to 60 inches and a majority of this water came on August 26^th and 27^th. The city shut down for a week and there are people still trying to piece their lives back together.

Clayton went into work the morning the storm hit, he wasn’t able to make it all the way to his station but he was able to make it to a station. He worked it and he saw it and I am grateful that he made it back home to me in one piece. He at one point one driving the wrong way down 59, pulling people out of the flood waters and housing them in his ambulance until their transport arrived and then he led the way to the GRB which was the shelter for everyone that no longer had a place to call home. He is truly my hero.

While Clayton was hanging out at the station figuring out his assignment they looked outside and saw this dumpster traveling down the street. The current was so strong that it was able to carry a full dumpster along. They eventually pulled it into a parking lot with the pumper.

The city decided to switch up the shift schedule and Clayton had to go back into work early. They called in 2 shifts at a time and were asking that they work 48 hour shifts. They soon realized that they had too many people working and let Clayton’s shift go home only to turn around and come back for his normal shift 24 hours later. He got off work and was able to rest when everyone else started going back to work. Since the city had called 2 shifts in at a time there was a rare opportunity to have a picture with all four shifts at the station, this probably wont happen again.

We had some visitors at our house, one of my oldest friends had been evacuated an her husband needed to go back to work so they needed to come back to town came and stayed with us for a couple of days. We needed to get out of the house one day and really couldn’t go that many places so we feed the ducks and we headed to chuckecheese. The girls had a fun sleep over and it was a good break from the news!

We weathered the storm, we managed not to get flooded. We were flooded into our neighborhood for a while but that’s about it. Tess’s school was delayed for 2 weeks so she had the longest summer ever. It was a long and rough week for Houston, but as the saying goes we are Houston Strong.