On that note, this year we decided to give each other some pretty awesome presents! First, I thought it would be fun, meaningful...even touching... for us to reenact the days before our wedding. We got married two days after we finished finals. We spent those two days, packing up our separate apartments and hauling all the stuff to our new apartment. During those days we learned what each of us likes to hoard: Jeff- class notes and papers, Angela- dishes, kitchen items, and books. So to commemorate our first move, the day I finished up Medical School, we packed up our apartment to head to our new home for the next 5 years: Temple, Tx. We learned that Jeff still hoards class notes and papers (I finally got rid of my organic chemistry notes) and Angela still loves her kitchen items and books and has added to her list sewing stuff. Although, she made a valiant effort at clearing out her fabric stores. We noted that over the years we have focused our book collecting to children's books. With the help of Nana we have over 30 Little Critter books!
For our gifts. I decided to splurge and spend a little bit more than we normally do for anniversaries, but hey this is the big 5. So on Friday I bought her a house! That's right we are now homeowners!
Angela promised to give me the greatest present a man can receive from his wife; a gift that requires, especially in her case, the sacrifice of her body, her health, her mind, and her energy for 9 months, a present that will require years of commitment and sacrifice but promises to endow our marriage with untold memories and blessings... I came through with the house; however, Angela did not deliver!
I will say, she gave it her best effort to get that baby here this week. We packed all week, and I made Angela do all the heavy lifting... well maybe not all of it. This picture was taken on Wednesday night. Angela had been having her normal off and on contractions so we went to Lowe's to pick up some paint and moving supplies. In the store the contractions started coming pretty strong and regular. They continued after dinner and got closer together (9 mins and then 6 mins). We started making plans with our friends about where to take Christine, we packed the bags, the snacks, got Christine ready, took a commemorative photo and... the contractions stopped.
This scenario has repeated itself several times over the last few weeks. It's quite the roller coaster of emotions, but I keep reminding myself, that baby will eventually come out.
Mother nature gave us another present for our anniversary weekend, more of a leaving Houston present. Two stories will help explain this story's significance. When Angela and I were first dating I told her about Texas and Texas size rain storms. I told her that the storms sometimes occur very quickly and can be really powerful, much more powerful than anything they have in Utah. I told her about one time when my sister-in-law Ali had first moved to Texas. She wanted to go running, but I told her, it looked like it was going to storm. She said we had plenty of time to take a short run. One block from the house, we were in a torrential downpour, with huge gusts of wind and lightning strikes all around us. We ran back to the house just in time to witness our neighbors gigantic tree get uprooted and fall onto their house in the wind.
Since moving to Texas we have experienced several large storms. One storm Angela will never let me forget. I was at school studying for my Step 1, and I received a frantic phone call from Angela. She told me that apartment complex was flooding. I assumed she was overreacting. "She's from Utah. She just isn't used to these Texas storms." I finally realized she was not overreacting when she told me the water had come in all the way to our closet! By the time I got home, though, the storm had passed so I had not experienced the initial anxiety and stress of rising flood waters.
Well Saturday night, mother nature sent us an amazing, stressful storm as her going away present from Houston, and Angela finally got her moment to say, "See! wouldn't you have been freaking out too if you were home alone during a storm like this?!" Answer: I was freaking out, and I wasn't alone.
The rainstorm started rather suddenly. We opened the windows to let in the nice fresh rain smell. But then we had to close the windows quickly because the wind was so hard it was blowing the rain in through the window. Then the rain water started to rise.
It's hard to appreciate in these photos, but this is right along the front of our apartment. It is about 6-7 inches deep all over the courtyard. I slopped through the water to make sure none of the drains were clogged, but it was just coming down too fast.
It was lightning and thundering pretty loudly too. Christine was scared, until Angela told her it was like in Mr. Brown Can Moo when he goes BOOM BOOM BOOM to make thunder. Then she started just repeating "like in Mr. Brown Can Moo!" everytime there was big thunder. Then we heard a weird kind of thunder, it was more like cracking and then BOOM! We looked out our window to see
The three-story-tall tree in front of our apartment had fallen over and was resting on the roof of the apartments across the courtyard. (I did not get a very good photos of the tree)
Here's a video if it doesn't work just click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/123zuzzy/8690019645/
Now Angela has seen a large tree fall down due to a Texas thunderstorm. We are now ready to move.
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