Euphrony in absentia

While the Euphrony family continue to wait for power to be restored at our humble abode, I thought I would fill you in on the madness that was last weeks "vacation" from work and school. (As a side note, the power company lists our zip code as having only 33% still without power as of early this morning. Secretly, Mrs. E is convinced that, when there are only 1000 or so left without power in Houston, we will be among those lucky few.) Right now we're all worn out, having stayed at three different places in the last week. The kids want their home, Mrs. E and I want our bed, and no one wants to go to a suitcase to find closes for the day. Sometime soon normal life will resume, but not quite yet it seems. While we wait I'll give you a recap of what Euphrony has been up to in absentia.

As I had mentioned last week, we road out the storm in our house. The damage on our street wasn't really all that bad, and between eight (or so) hours spent last Saturday and Sunday cleaning up the yard we were back in shape. Except for the lack of electricity, of course. And the piles of debris that still sit in my front yard. With no reason to stay and several reasons to leave, we packed up some suitcases and headed to my in-laws house in Dallas. Being from some archaic time, they have neither cable nor broadband internet access at their house - but they do have a trove of classic toys that the kids love to play with. Really, not having fast, easy internet all week was a good thing. Having little to keep be busy I probably would have spent hours every day looking at the same information on storm damage and repair estimates, resulting in serious depression. I was already down, feeling rather powerless to do anything to restore my family to "normality", so the barrage of stories would have been less than helpful.

Since Mrs. E's parents both work full-time, we had the days pretty much to ourselves. Monday we hung out with my sister-in-law and their daughter and son (they live not far from Mrs. E's parents) - the Lil'E's always love playing with their cousins. Once my brother got home from work he cooked us some dinner. Now, I a pretty good cook and can whip up a nice meal when I have a mind to; for my brother, cooking is a passion. He grilled some chicken breasts that had marinated in an apricot sauce all day, and some bell peppers and jalapeños that were stuffed with cream cheese, green onion, and bacon and then wrapped in bacon. Add in a broccoli and rice casserole and it was pure heaven to people who had eaten little but junk that last few days. Thanks, bro - that's still the best meal I had all last week!

On Tuesday we decided to enjoy the sunny day and cold front (only got up to around 80°F) and go to the Dallas Zoo. It was, apparently, Houston Evacuee Day at the zoo - probably more than 90% of the people there were from Houston. I'm guessing that they did above-average business all last week. As usual, the zoo was a hit with the kids.

Wednesday we hung out more with my sister-in-law at the Firewheel Town Center and let the kids play. Firewheel is an open-air mall, with and outdoor playground, a huge fountain with fish, and a stream that the kids could play around. With Mrs. E pushed a napping Lil'er E in the stroller and did some shopping, Lil'E and I spent two hours running around the stream and playing games. The most common game lately has been where she pretends to be a princess and I'm the prince she marries. We fight off bad guys, get married, and on this occasion had a baby. She actually led me to where the "hospital" was beside the stream, laid down on a rock, and I swear was about to start making birthing noises before she declared the baby was here. (Do any guys out there besides me feel a little odd pretending to "have babies" with their little girls?)

On Thursday we pretty much just chilled around my in-laws house. Mrs. E shopped.

On Friday we put Mrs. E on a plane to come back to Houston while the kids and I went to stay the weekend with my brother. Mrs. E was in a play that was supposed to perform the weekend of the hurricane (but didn't, for obvious reasons). They were, however, able to reschedule for the following weekend; so the organizer paid for Erin to fly back (since we only had one car in Dallas) so she could round out the cast. There was no reason for me and the kids to be there so we stayed the weekend in Dallas. The kids and I had fun at my brothers on Friday afternoon and Saturday, then got up and drove back to Houston on Sunday morning.

Now I'm back at work and Lil'E heads back to school tomorrow morning. I'm planning on going to go chat with and see Addison Road in Conroe on Thursday night while they are here with Pillar, along with Our Heart's Hero and Philmont. I've heard some of Our Heart's Hero's music, but not anything from Philmont, so I'm looking forward to getting a taste of their music as well.

Normal life. Right now, that is our dream. We're making a start on it.

Tags: Hurricane Ike, Dallas Zoo, Power Outage, Addison Road, Pillar, Our Heart's Hero, Philmont