moving back after harvey | a year and a half later

I don't know if I've officially announced this on the blog yet but I have moved! This post has actually been a long time coming. If you're a newer follower you might not know that in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey struck Houston me and my family were flooded out of our house and had to evacuate. You can find my full flooding story here. I thought today I would give a rundown of the past few years of my life and my thoughts on everything. :)

*I'll be linking to insta posts throughout this post where I talk about the topic so click on the links if you're interested in that.

Dec 21, 2017

Every since we flooded we've been working on rebuilding. After saving everything we could from the flooded house it was torn down. Saying goodbye was a bit intense. That was actually around Christmas of 2017 so we were at my grandparents house when it officially got demolished. I remember coming back and seeing my old house not there and being like wow. It's just gone. It took a couple of hours and all of those memories were just. Gone. 

Jan 2, 2018

One of the big things I've had to learn from this process is that just because the physical thing is gone doesn't mean the feeling is. The memory and feeling are still in your heart and head. I have moved 7 times in my life. I feel like I shouldn't get attached to houses by now. The thing is. This was going to be our forever home. But hey. God had other plans. And I think it worked out OK. 

Jun 4, 2018

Over the next few months we settle into our rented house and have lots and lots of meetings. After lots of decisions with architects and builders and contractors it's building time! Over this whole building process we visited a lottt. It was kind of insane to see the development.

Jun 25, 2018

I remember when we first saw the first part done. I don't know if it has registered in my mind that we were building a new house until that point haha. Since we didn't want to flood again we built the house 6 feet up. You're currently looking at me standing on the first floor. 

Aug 6, 2018 

Bye the time we returned from South Carolina that summer the house was almost done! It was slightly the same feeling of when we drove up to see our house demolished. Surprised and just generally not knowing how to feel. But wow. It looked cool haha. My parents have good taste. 

Dec 20, 2018 

My dad has an actual job (as a professor) but pretty much building the house became his second job. The garage was a workshop and if my dad was home he was either grading papers or building something. And we of course wanted to move in as soon as possible so there wasn't much of a break. I think us children definitely got it the best in this whole process. My parents always seemed crazy stressed. Which makes sense but it was just a lot to be around haha.  

This was also around the time I started being a whole lot healthier (might do a health journey video/post later) and so I would go on walks with my mom a lot around the neighborhood. At the beginning it was totally deserted except for the workers. Everyone in my neighborhood flooded. Some decided to just remodel, some decided to raise there house, and some decided to totally rebuild like us. After around 6 months the people who just remodeled started to move in! It would always make me so happy to see a new family. Whenever I saw a house torn down it made me happy. Just seeing progress made me happy. Around winter of 2018 things actually kind of returned to normal. There were kids at the park and people walking and it just made me smile so so much. We still hadn't moved back in though. 

Feb 15, 2019

Fast forward to February of 2019 and it was finally moving time. It seemed like for two solid weeks we were packing. We had only lived in the house for like a year. I'm not sure why we were packing so much. 

Feb 16, 2019

Moving day was honestly really fun. All of the friends came and helped and we ate foods and everyone helped me set up my room (y'all will be getting a room tour soon give me time to finalize everything). Everyone that came also knew the importance of it to us so it was just generally really nice. 

After we moved in and settled in we had a house warming party! It was mostly me saying hi to adults I didn't know at all but it was also like wow. This is a legit house. With life.

I love the new house. Plus at this point I would say over half of the neighborhood has moved back. There are still so many empty lots and houses under construction but there is also life. And people. 

I'm more sympathetic of natural disasters now. I'm guessing everyone who has been through one is. Whenever I see news about a new storm or tornado or anything I turn away. At my orthodontist office (I don't know if I've mentioned that on the blog either but yeah I have braces) the TV in the waiting room is always just playing the weather and it's like no. I really don't want to know. 

I want to end this by saying that this event wasn't normal. If you don't live in Houston you probably don't know this but we had three 500 year floods in 3 years (here's my post from Febuary of 2017). That. Doesn't. Make. Sense. Global warming is a thing my friendsss. I am not an expert on this subject but I have been trying to educate myself as I think all of y'all should as well. Do your part! Follow tollydollposh. I promise you'll be happy you did. 

Have you ever experienced a natural disaster?