End of the Year Review 2017

It’s been a heck of year for the city of Houston! We’ve had some big and unusual events including:

• Hosting a Super Bowl 52
• An Epic Flood
• A World Series Baseball Championship
• And…Snow!

It was an amazing year for the city, and we certainly participated in those events to one degree or another. But even in between, we had some pretty good moment. Here’s a list of things that happened this year of 2017!

• We kicked of the year with the Super Bowl! – Tickets were way too high to attend this event (like around $2,000 each), so we didn’t go to NRG stadium, but we did go downtown and participate in many of the events sponsored by the City of Houston. We also had the SuperBowl events come to our neighborhood!! Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars did shows just a few blocks away from us. Also ESPN and lots of celebrities were trolling through our neighborhood to various events. Here’s the whole run down of that weekend…
• Monster Truck Show – Girl Scouts went to a Monster Truck show! I went too. Also took the neighbor boy Romeo. It was good, loud fun!
• Mardi Gras – spent a pleasant afternoon on the beach and at the Children’s parade at Mardi Gras Galveston. 🙂
• Daddy daughter Dance – Lots of Daddy’s and Daughters showed up for this event. A night of dancing and food. It was kind of nice.
• Ivy Goes Camping – Off she goes with the Girl Scouts for a weekend of camping fun.
• Waco – Let’s go to Waco for fun! What??? Yes, it turns out Waco is quite an interesting place to visit.
• Rodeo Houston – Everyone around me is LAME! Nobody wanted to go to the Rodeo. But at the last minute, a neighbor said, “Hey, you want some free tickets?” I said, heck yeah! So I grabbed Jose and said, “Vamos, amigo!” We ended up going again with my Mom and Larry a week or so later when they unexectedly came to Houston for a visit. I always enjoy the rodeo. Big fun!
• Easter at Jane’s church – We did Easter service at the Methodist Church Jane attends. Lots of people! Afterward, we had food at a Texas BBQ restaurant.
• A New Car! – Holly got one.
• Museum Day – Schools out! What to do? Let’s go visit the museums…especially the art museum. Naked boobies everywhere! Ivy was shocked.
• New Skyscraper – Despite layoffs, Holly just keeps moving up in her job at BHPbilliton, even moving up to the 13th floor in their brand new skyscraper.
• 1903 Circus Show – It’s Holly’s birthday! Let’s go to the circus. Good show! We saw them appear on America’s Got Talent later on in this truncated version of the show – > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbLRJ3oa3Qw
• Father’s Day Man Crate – These things are actually pretty nifty.
• Rusty Died – My 4-legged friend of more than 14 years passed away. 🙁
• Impact VBS – What an awesome church. This 6 week vacation bible school is more like a Summer Camp. The kids got to go places and do lots of things, and even got a bag of school supplies and some Sketcher shoes that light up!
• St John’s VBS – Another round of this awesome and exciting VBS with Jenna Kuykendahl
• Girl Scout Sleepover – Spent the night with a bunch of giggly girls at “The Cottage” (Girl Scout headquarter house in the Heights).
• Vault! – Ivy did a week long camp of high-flying acrobatics. Cool Stuff! Looked like fun.
• Eclipse day at Splash Town – Well, we didn’t get to fly a private jet to see the total eclipse of the sun, so we settled for the next best thing which was a partial eclipse and a day at Splashtown!
• Flood! – Hurricane Harvey parked over Houston and dumped a trillion gallons of water! We woke up one morning to epic floodwaters, and highways turned into rivers.
• Got on the TNT Team at Discovery Gymnastics! – TNT means “Tumbling and Trampoline”. Olympics here we come!
• Hall & Oats – I can go for that!
• Art Fest – Twice each year, the art studios up the street from us put on a big Open House and festival. I really like it! This year I rustled up the neighborhood kids and went for a visit.
• Halloween Book Parade – Instead of a Halloween party, our school does a Halloween Book Parade. Kids must dress up like a character that is in a book which they’ve read.
• Thanksgiving with Grandma Jane in Texas – We were going to Arkansas for Thanksgiving, so Jane made a little Thanksgiving dinner for us the weekend before! Awesome! Beautiful food…and tasty too!
• Thanksgiving in Arkansas – A 10 hour drive to Arkansas and we finally arrive at Mom’s house. Lots of food! We hang out and eat more food. Then go to Branson, Missouri for some Showboat Branson Belle fun and riding rollercoasters at Silver Dollar City.
• Snow day – I wake up early one morning to a brightly lit room…what is this? It’s SNOW!! It snowed in Houston! Woohoo!