Live a Charmed Life: Hurricane Harvey 2017

I had no clue that Hurricane Harvey was going to be a "thing". We went to church on Wednesday night and everyone was talking about it. I've lived in the Houston area for awhile (since I was in 7th grade...I'm 31 now) and the flooding during Allison was terrible, we got rain during Ike, Rita never showed and since then we've had two rain events. The Memorial Day Flood of 2015 and the Tax Day Flood of 2016. Some homes in Houston and the greater Houston area have literally flooded three times in three years. Our area has had flooding three times since we bought our home three years ago. Jonathan came home Wednesday and told me groceries were going fast and people were flipping out. In true prepper fashion we thought people were flipping out for no reason. We got some essentials, filled up with gas (per Rita where all of Houston tried to evacuate and created a 24 hour traffic jam), and figured we would have a party of a time hunkering down like we always do.

You can read about my other storm experiences HERE

Luckily our home has never flooded. In 2015 we immediately saw the drainage issues and corrected those in 2016 literally days before the second flood. So many homes in our neighborhood flooded from flash flooding but did not have standing water in their homes. Just coming in under baseboards and ruining carpet because the run off could not drain fast enough. One of which was my mom's and I was there when it happened and I was pregnant with Milam. It was a very strange experience. In 2016 we got close...VERY VERY close to getting water in our home from it not being able to drain fast enough but it did not get in. We had centimeters of wiggle room left. This year we got more rain total but it didn't come as fast as it did in 2016 and our house fared awesome. We had one small roof leak from our brand new metal roof but that is nothing compared to others. No water even dripped into the house...just discolored the ceiling. The roofing company has already been out.

The first two days we enjoyed our time as a family. We all had off Friday. The middle of storm got really hairy and iffy. Unsure what was going to happen. Neighborhoods in our town being evacuated, at this point we knew our house wouldn't flood but weren't sure if we would lose power and if we did for how long. We never did lose power. It didn't even flicker once. Then it calmed down for us here in Conroe and the grief set in. When the sun finally came out the entire greater Houston area took notice.

The first wave of donations was an immediate need of prenatal vitamins and formula I had a lot of that on hand (Milam is already on milk but I keep formula on hand during hurricane season while the babes are on formula since you don't have to refrigerate a can of formula and water). The second wave was cleaning out our closets. People were mentioning they were cold in the shelters so we got towels, blankets, and hoodies. That's when Georgia also cleaned out her toys and donated a lot of her belongings. The third wave was when I got a message from the wife of a guy I went to high school with who I've done photos for a few times about a family near Jonathan's high school. I started gathering supplies, posted it on Facebook, and people started donating to this one family via me. People sent me money via paypal and I loaded up the kids and my step dad and we went out shopping. We ended up with 6 bins of items for this family as well as two gift cards. I was amazed by the generosity of others. It was astounding.

Jonathan was able to deliver all of the things we had collected for her and her family. She has two boys and is pregnant AND her husband is working out of state in the oil field and was not able to make it home. Her family left their house with their clothes they were wearing and that was it...by boat.

Jonathan was able to get out and do hard physical labor for 4 days. I'm glad he was able to work so hard.

We managed to enjoy a lot of friends and family time and I stopped watching the news 24/7. Georgia was off Friday and then off the entire next week plus Labor Day the following Monday. We had A LOT of time at home because we had no other options. Our biggest worry was that we had gotten knocked out of our back to school schedule which really isn't a worry at all.

The first storm clouds to roll in. My step dad measured 38 inches of rain overall.

Water rushing out of our fence near the playroom. We want to get a wood fence installed but are problem solving on how to let water through in situations like this since our home sits in the middle of a hill...lowest point being our mailbox.