Lost City of Atlanta...

Well, it's been a crazy week here.  It's been raining here for the last 8 days, and on Monday, after 17+ inches of rain, many of the rivers, lakes, and streams had just reached their limits.  Monday morning the flash flood warnings were issued, and news started reporting about several roads getting flooded out.  I was already at work keeping an eye on it, and worried that I wouldn't make it home, I left around 3:00pm... apparently just in time.  I managed to make the 20-something mile drive home in around 45 minutes, most of the traffic due to a lane and 1/2 of 575 being covered in water for a good 100ft in Woodstock.  Less than an hour later, I heard 575 was blocked fully, and around 2 hours later, it looked like the picture above.  (575, for those of you who don't live here, is the major road that connects Canton/Woodstock to Atlanta).  Many of my friends driving similar routes to me took 4 1/2 or 5 hours to get home Monday evening, taking crazy routes to make it home.  By Tuesday morning the water had receeded on 575, and after they checked the bridges around 10am, I headed into work.  Luckily, that was the only way the flooding had affected us.

However, my friend Greg wasn't so lucky. Greg lives in a house with a friend of his and his brother, and unfortunately, Greg's room is the basement.  Monday morning Greg's house went from some wet carpet in the basement to knee-deep water.  Nearly everything he has was destroyed.  Hopefully they have flood insurance, it's looking promising that they do, but we haven't heard confirmation he's covered.  Greg took some pictures which I've posted below.

 

In other news, not much else is new.  Josh is teething and Katie is being herself. :)  As always keep an eye on my Twitter and Facebook for my day-to-day updates!

Updates...

An interesting last couple weeks.  We got the news 2 weeks ago that Mel's grandma (father's side) had passed away.  She lived in Pennsylvania, and after seeing that plane tickets would cost us around $1500 to fly up there on short notice, and knowing how much of a pain it is to fly with one kid, let alone 2, we decided to drive the 13+ hour drive up there with Melanie's mom.  Surpsingly, both Katie & Josh did very very well.  We brought 20+ episodes of "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" for Katie's DVD player, and she was set... although everyone else about went crazy listening to it. :P  Besides the stops every 1 1/2 - 2 hours for diaper changes, bottle feedings, bathroom breaks, etc, it was a nice drive.

It was good to see everyone on that side of the family, as we rarely get up that way, but it's sad it takes an event like a funeral to get everyone together.  It's been pretty much the same way with my family in Iowa, as well... seems like we only get up there for weddings and funerals, too.

I've been battling a cold for the last 3-4 days, and it's finally started getting better last night.  I feel a lot better today, but of course even with my best attempts to stay away from her, Katie wakes up this morning sniffling, coughing, and sneezing.  Hopefully she'll feel better by her 2 year birthday party this Sunday. :)  Crazy that she's already 2 years old... looking back at her 1 year party pictures, she couldn't even walk yet... now she's began climbing up into her car seat by herself, and managed to scale the back of our living room chair and hop in it.   (With supervision, of course). :)

Anyways, we'll post pictures on Flickr for everyone who can't make it to the party Sunday.

Anniversary Weekend...

This weekend was our 6 year anniversary.  Crazy how time flies. :)  To celebrate, we headed up to South Carolina to Mel's mom's place on Friday afternoon, and crashed there that night.  She watched Josh & Katie Saturday while we headed up to Charlotte, NC and spent the day at the US National Whitewater Center.  Basically, it's almost like an outdoor activities amusement park.  They have mountain bike trails, kayaking, white water rafting, rock climbing, zip lining, etc.  We managed to get in a couple hours of white water rafting and around an hour of kayaking and some lunch before being exausted. :)  But it was a total blast... I recommend anyone to go check it out... it's not a bad drive from Atlanta.

After that, we ran by a mall, and then headed to our hotel in downtown Charlotte.  We stayed at a place called Aloft, which is above a shopping/restraunt/bar area called EpiCenter.  The place was very busy Saturday night, and had a free concert by Cowboy Mouth like 3 stories below our hotel room, but right outside our window.  We went out and grabbed some food, walked around, saw some of the concert, grabbed some drinks and managed to stay out until about 1am before collapsing.  Even after the concert ended, you could still hear the music from the clubs in the EpiCenter in our hotel room.  It was a great location and a nice place, but definatly not for those wanting a quiet night. :)  Luckily we were so exausted we fell asleep pretty easy.

Sunday morning we grabbed some coffee, did a little shopping, and headed back to pick up the little ones for the drive back home.  Overall it was a fun weekend, and it was really good to spend some time alone for a change. :)

Time for an update...

Been awhile since I've posted anything, so figured I should probably update everyone. :) Ever since our hospital runs, everyone has been just fine... Katie has been herself, and is really starting to grow up. She's able to count to 3 and she's putting words together pretty well. It's great to see her really understanding us, when we tell her to go get something in particular, or shut the door, or go get some pajamas, etc. Although, she's starting to get a tinge of the 'terrible twos' I think, fussing when she doesn't get what she wants, or is sleepy, etc... and has figured out the word 'no', but she doesn't generally use it except to answer us when we ask if she wants XYZ... yet. :) But overall she's really well behaved.

Josh is doing great, eating and sleeping well, and generally only waking up once a night, around 3am. He's really growing up, too, and is getting really good at holding his head up. Overall he's really relaxed and really only fusses when he's hungry.

When Josh was in the hospital and Katie came to visit, she was really in love with the aquarium on the bottom floor at Children's Healthcare. So last week we got to take Katie to the Georgia Aquarium. Overall she had a blast, but we made the mistake of going around the time she was due for a nap, so she became kinda restless and grumpy towards the end. Plus the place was just packed, so it was a bit crazy anyways. She didn't even make it out of the parking deck when we left before she was passed out.

Mel started working weekends at Best Buy again this month, so I've had a couple days watching the kids by myself... I have a new respect for what Mel does every day. It's pretty nuts with both of them, and they seem to both start fussing or wanting to eat or need a new diaper at the exact same time. I don't know how she gets anything done around the house during the day, it's been a madhouse for me on those days.

We finally decided to get rid of our home phone (678-581-0932), as we never use it and no one calls except telemarketers, so if anyone needs to reach us, it's best to just call our cell phones.

Tomorrow night we're heading to see the new Harry Potter movie.  Mel has been reading all the books and is really hyped.  We had a mini Harry Potter marathon this weekend and watched the first 4 movies... we'll finish up tonight. Honestly, never thought I would be, but I'm pretty excited, too.

Anyways, not much else new!