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? 

Life Update Including Moving, House Getting Torn Down, Being On The Radio + Other Things

I haven't done a personal post just talking about life in soooooooooooooo longgggggggg. Because  some stuff has been happening to me lately I thought it would be good to do a little update post! I've been meaning to do this for the longest time but I just haven't gotten around to it. Hopefully you'll be able to understand what I'm saying haha. I'm basically going from this post on kind of. I don't know. This is already going just soooo well.

-The first few months after we flooded were just freaking weird. Pretty much everything changed and schedules were weird and we did things we would never have done before like actually get food from fast food places and stay really long at my friends houses, where I went after school, even on school nights. The parents were always working on stuff and it was just a lot.

-We stayed at the house we moved to after harvey for maybe 4 months. That was a really interesting 4 months. Untilllll another house opened up and my parents decided we would move there because it was a lot closer to school and it was bigger and just overall good things. At first I was honestly really opposed to moving because we had just gotten settled and I think I just really didn't want anymore change?? Like you know??

-I know now that it was a really good decision and I'm a lot happier! So right before Christmas, we moved! The house we're staying in now is so much better and bigger and just nicer than the tiny one we where staying in. It is actually walking distance from my school (I mean it's 20 minutes so not the 5 minutes of my old flooded one but it's still really good). I feel better inviting friends over and it's just so much better.

-For Christmas we went to my grandparents house in South Carolina! It was really nice and I had a nice time hanging out with them. Also during that time though our old (flooded) house got torn down. I got to say goodbye to it before we left but it was still really emotional. It was falling to the ground and we were in another state and just the thought that it was this empty lot was kind of a lot because I had so many memories in it you know?

-Ok I promise this is the last sad flood thing haha but recently I had to say goodbye my old elementary school. It flooded as well and for a while they thought they were just going to remodel it but they got some grant so they decided to tear it down and build a new building. That's overall good as it will be good for the neighborhood and the school and but it's still sad you know?

They had a little goodbye party and everyone put there hand prints, name, and graduating year on the wall. I would have put my last name as well but there was no need haha.

-I did UIL theatre this year in school which has been super cool! It's basically a theatre competition and we did steel magnolias which was super fun. I was only an understudy and we didn't actually advance haha but still cool.

-Speaking of school I've been having a great year school wise! All of my classes have been super cool. I've gotten to be MC's for two shows which was like the best thing. Annnndddd I'm in yearbook at my school and we officially finished it and made the deadline! So congrats to us haha.

-A couple of weeks ago I also got to go on the radio with school! It was me and a couple of my friends and we read a couple journalism pieces we wrote. It was such a cool experience! Thanks for everyone who listened and told me I did well!! :)

Featuring a terrible selfie with my friend who did it as well haha. :)

-I've also been to a couple marches this year! We went to the Women's March in January, another Women's March recently, and of course the March For Our Lives! I filmed a vlog for the March For Our Lives and last weeks post was also on that if you missed it. :) :)

-I hit 40 subscribers on youtube! Yes yes I know this isn't that much but it made me happy ok don't judge. If you're not subscribed to me by the way you really should. :0

-I got to see Grace Vanderwall in concert and oh my gosh ahhhhhhhhhh!!!! She was so good and it was one of my first concerts and it was for my birthday and it was just freaking good.

-I actually started working with some brands on insta recently which has made me happy. :) If you want a full post with discount codes comment down below!

-Today there was a gun threat someone posted on Instagram and like half the kids didn't go to school, like everyone was scared, and just ahhhhhhhh. < How I feel at the moment

There is probably other stuff I could talk about and wanted to talk about but I can't remember anything else right now so that's that. If you want to keep up with my daily life, make sure to follow me on Instagram! 

What have y'all been up to lately? What kind of posts do you want to see from me in the future?

My Story Of Hurricane Harvey Including My House Flooding, Swimming In The Middle Of The Street, + A Bunch Of Other Super Weird stuff

Hi. Hello. Wooowww. It's weird to get on a computer again. It feels like forever since I posted although it's only been a couple weeks. To be precise the last time I posted it was the 25th of August and today is the 16th of September so that is *tries to do the math and fails* Ummm a long time. You know of those books where the main character is like "it seems so long ago even though it was only two days ago and I have changed so much I feel like a different person"? Yeah, that's how I feel which really shouldn't be the case. Soooooo.... If you haven't heard yet Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey hit Texas especially Houston pretty hard recently. As I type this it's pretty much over and almost everyone has moved onto Irma because hurricane season is just so fun *sarcasm intended*. You probably don't know but I live in Houston, Texas. It's an amazing city that is the 4th largest in the country and home to amazing cultures and people and places. One interesting flaw about it though is that it floods quite easily. I have now been through three floods in the past 2 and half years. I'm not even exaggerating. The first two times though were a lot smaller which is why you probably didn't hear about it. A lot of my friends flooded but thankfully I didn't. This time I wasn't so lucky. I thought why not make something of what happened and write a blog post about it. It helps me and maybe it will be entertaining to you. First, though I'm going to address why I haven't posted. At first, it was because of course flooding and now it is because we just got the internet in the house we are staying in and my computer charger somehow died and we just got a new one. Lots of fun things.

I put stickers on my face. Deal with it. 

I had heard about the hurricane of course and I was kind of scared but I thought it would be ok. On Friday, August 25th (the big thing was on Sunday) I woke up and the sky was dark and It looked like nighttime. This had happened before though so I wasn't so scared. Houston seems to either be in a drought or just raining all the time. Haha. So I went to check my phone and opened my news app because I'm a weird 12 year old who does things like that.  I was kind of surprised to find that pretty much everything was about the storm. This made it a lot more real in my mind. I hadn't really comprehended how bad it would be until then. 

My parents were already awake and my mom looked worried and told me and my sisters we would have to do a lot of stuff today to prepare. So that is exactly what we did all day. We rolled up all of the carpets (which I find pointless but my dad said some of them were "priceless" so I gave up arguing). After doing that we got a bunch of cans and put them under basically every single piece of furniture in the house. At this point, my mom had started talking about things like getting on the roof and needing a ladder if the water got that high. I still didn't think we would flood though. Once done with raising the furniture we picked up everything we could off of the floor. I again thought that this was pointless but it turned out to save a lot of my things. It was around 12:00 when we finished doing everything. I got on my computer and posted this post. You can see from that post I don't think I will flood. By the time I posted this video though I was almost sure it would flood. 

The next day I wake up and it was of course raining. I looked at my phone and once again the storm was the front page of everything. Maybe I was just in a really sad mood but I think that is the point that I decided and finally realized we would flood. There was this humongous Category 4 (it went down to a tropical storm but at the time) Hurricane coming directly towards Houston. Houston floods just when it rains for a couple hours. I don't remember that much of what happened that day but I do remember going to the store a couple times and so many things being sold out. It was like the end of the world or something. It was pretty much all of the disasters "grab everything from the store" movies but in real life. I think maybe a couple of my sister's friends came over but I'm not really sure. Also, I made cupcakes. Those were amazing. Just saying. I do have some skill cooking wise. Sometimes. At around 8:00 there started to be a tornado warning so we went in the hallway and played risk. I'm pretty sure the bayous (things that hold water) hadn't overflowed. Then I, of course, get a call from my friend and the water is literally up to her door. This scares me because her area isn't supposed to flood. It's all very weird and hectic and just kind of horrible. At maybe 9:45 I get in bed and although it takes me a while to fall asleep I finally do.
I woke up the next day at around 5:30 to the lights on and footsteps in the hallway. My mind doesn't immediately go to flooding though which interests me. Instead, I just thought that my dad had woken up early as he does sometimes. After maybe 10 minutes he basically barges into my room and says water is coming into the house. I have an interesting thing where when something bad happens I tend to smile and laugh. This is not because I have no heart or feelings but I think it is a coping mechanism. I'm not sure. But like if you tell me someone died and I smile it's because of that. So when he told me that I just kind of smiled put on my clothes and half walked half ran out of my room. I was going to the living room when I noticed our bathroom and how it was totally absolutely under water. I would think in a situation like this I would be thinking about like life and all that but I was more thinking about how it was a cool adventure. It might be because I was tired but it might have also been because I had already told myself it would flood so it wasn't really a surprise. I put on my rain boots and for the next hour or so we worked to get everything together. We were already prepared for flooding but we put towels near the door and raised all of the furniture higher and stuff like that.
I'm not exactly sure but I think after maybe an hour or two all of the floors were covered in water. Like that is all it took to pretty much destroy the house. Once we had done everything we could for a while we just sat. It had been raining the whole time and water was rising.  I am not sure when but at some point, the water got so high to the electrical and the dishwasher caught on fire and we put it out quickly but after that, we had to cut the power. At around 8:00 the water got to about 1 feet in the house and at 10:00 2 feet. At about 10:15 we decided to go to the neighbor's house because staying in our house was both dangerous and absolutely torture. The neighbor was 8 houses down and had two stories so all though that wasn't ideal it was a lot better than us. So we started packing all of the stuff that we could and making sure that we had done everything. At this point outside of our house there was maybe 4 feet of water and on the street at least 5 so there was a lot of boats and kayaks going around which is kind of crazy now that I think about it. We got someone we knew to take my mom and my two sisters to the house and me and my dad stayed. All through this whole thing I was thinking about my grandparents who lived right next door. My Teta (grandma) has a bad knee so she slips quite easily and I was getting very very scared something would happen to her.  When the guy came back my dad asked him if he could pick up my grandparents and bring him to the house. He said yes but after he picked up someone else first. The water kept rising and I was getting scared I wouldn't be able to stand outside of the house so then me and my dad got out stuff and walked outside. Can I just comment on how crazy this experience was? The water was almost to my shoulders in our front yard. Like that should never happen. So when we were satisfied we wouldn't die we walked over to the neighbor's house. I remember thinking how cool it was to see the dry ground because I hadn't seen that in like 8 million hours. After we arrived my dad went back to get the rest of our stuff and to check on my grandparents. He did that a couple times which had to have been torture for him until my mom said that the guy probably forgot and that they should just walk here. This whole time I was getting very very scared. As I said my grandparents are old and short and not in the best medical condition. It was both dangerous for them to try to walk to the house but also to stay at their house. I was personally against them trying to walk over here but my mom said they should because the water might keep rising. They did arrive safely but that was definitely one of the scariest (emotionally) things I have gone through. I think it was around 11:30 at this point and I was seriously getting hungry so I ate some chips that the guy had. I am not exactly sure what time but I am guessing around 5-6 my mom gets texts from her friends saying that we need to get out of the house and that it could be dangerous even in a second story. This makes her totally freak out so when we see a boat we ask them if they can bring us to the Kroger which is being used as like a pickup center and they say yes. This was both fun and kind of crazy because we literally slid down the roof onto the boat. Both scary and awesome. They drop us off at the Kroger and we wait there for a while for one of my mom's cousins who has a boat to come pick us up. He ends up not being able to get there and that is when I see like legit military national guard army trucks driving through my neighborhood in like 6 feet water. I mean that's kind of cool. We figure out that they're going to pick up everyone at the Kroger and bring them to the convention center that they are using as a humongous shelter. I remember telling my dad about a book that I read about hurricane Katrina and how some people died in the convention center. I'm not sure where I was going with that but I think deep down I might have been a little scared. The people let me and my sisters sit in the front where there was a cover but my mom and grandparents had to sit in the back where there was no cover at all whatsoever. Take in mind that it was still raining and the drive was at least 30 minutes to the center. I was talking to the guy who was driving us and I found out that the trucks are actual army trucks that are used to transport weapons and ammo. Not really made for people. I seriously feel so bad for my parents and grandparents and everyone who had to go through that. Me and my sisters were very very lucky. We got to the center and sign in and at this point, we are still pretty intent on going to a hotel or something so we call on our already drained phones and of course, find out that they are all full or closed because of course. It is now around 10/11 pm and we are all tired and wet and just kind of miserable. We decided to just give up and sleep there. They had cots and blankets and food and clothes which are basically all we wanted at the moment. We run into a couple of people we know so we get cots near them and after like two minutes I am fast asleep. The following morning my friend's dad came to pick us up.
I have the coolest friends pretty much ever so one of my friends let us stay at her house for I think about a week. It was so crazy going back to my house. Like wow. I can't even really describe it and because I'm a complete lunatic I don't have any pictures. Over that week my mom and dad and so many amazing people who came to help pack up all of our stuff, knock out the walls, and just generally clean. It's so weird seeing your house without walls like a bare slate because you have so many memories there. The neighborhood that I live in is very flood prone and I am going to say at least 3 quarters of the whole neighborhood flooded so when you drive or walk around there its just kind of devastating. There are piles of old furniture and pieces of flooring and walls and it makes me truly kind of sad. After maybe a week and a half of staying at peoples houses we finally moved into our own place which is where we are now. We were so so lucky because we had a house we were about to sell that did not flood so that is where we are staying now. The annoying thing was that it didn't have any furniture so I only got a bed two days ago and beds are good so it's kind of annoying.
 The generosity of people though all throughout this was amazing. The pastor from our church was at our house like every day that week just helping and so many people that we didn't even know came to help. Something I found kind of cool but also funny is that there were people just on the back of trucks handing out food. Like that is so awesome. I think up until a couple days ago and maybe now though there were/are houses that are still flooded. The reason for this is because there was something that held water that had so much water that it was going to break. The city decided that instead of letting it break they would instead release it slowly. I feel like this was a logical decision but also one that made so many more homes flood. Speaking of the city shoutout of to our Houston Mayor who is just kind of awesome and I think did a very good job throughout this whole thing. Another shoutout to the people who have people who have been bringing us dinner these past few days. Especially whoever brought the swirly brownies. Like those things were amazing. School wise my sisters school flooded so they can't open again until a bit later and in a different location but my school thankfully didn't. It started this Monday and I have been kind of loving it so far but now that we live so far away we have to get up earlier then we are used to and my parents drive me and it's a whole thing.

First I'm going to hopefully be posting every Monday so if you were wondering that is my new schedule. But also I'm not like back back as I still don't have internet so there is that. Ok so just to make it clear I did not write this post because I want everyone to say how sorry they are in the comments. I know this might be a bit harsh but I have heard enough of that already. There are a couple things you can do to help though. Number one is if you have any friends or family that was affected by the storm then reach out to them and ask them what you can do. If you have not been through a flood then you will not know all of the stuff you have to do. Like it's crazy. If you don't live near the people then you can still help. My mom set up like a wish list thing online so if you know anyone ask them if they have something like that or if you can help research something or call someone or anything. Number two if you don't know anyone but you still want to help then donate. There are so many amazing organizations out there that are/were helping people and it's really cool. I don't actually know that many but you should totally research it. Number three follow my blog and tell me how amazing I am in the comments. It helps, it really does.

Have you ever been through a flood? Has your house ever flooded? Have you ever been through a hurricane? Have you ever been through any type of natural disaster? Did you know about Harvey before you read this post? Should I do more story type posts like this?

Thoughts During a Flood

Recently Houston flooded. Again. This has happened 3 times (Including this one) in the last 2 years. Thankfully this time was a lot better but it was still scary. You know before the flood on memorial day (Last year) it hadn't flooding where I live 50 years. Climate change is a thing everyone and all data says so (hint hint most powerful person in the world right now). So I have decided to do a little post where I show my thoughts during a flood. Enjoy!

*Wakes up to my sister's screaming in the hallway*

Bahh what are they doing now. I just woke up and they need to get ready for school. 

*hears sister ask parents if we are going to school*

And what kind of question is that?? Of course we are going to school. Unless. Dun dun dun.

*Walks out of  room and sisters tell me that is has flooded.*

Ohhh. That's why they were asking that.  Wait what??? It is flooding. Like agin! Dangit. I had a really important and fun field trip scheduled for today. 

*walks outside*

You know this doesn't seem as bad as it has been before. We are proably fine. Maybe. Dun dun dun. 

*asks parents if we are going to school and they say yes*

Wait a minute. Yes???  But I CAN'T EVEN GET OUT OF THE DRIVEWAY! How am I supposed to get to school.

*frantically texts everyone* 

And if I can't get to school and there is still school the like bahh! Ok Nabila. Stay calm. Be a good girl. And get ready for the day.

*Get's ready*

I actually look pretty good in these boots. 

*see's that school has had a 2 hour delay*

Delay?! Seriously? They should just cancel school and also delaying like 2 minutes before my school starts is not cool people, not cool. Well I guess this means I have 2 extra hours. 

*keeps texting everyone to see if they are fine*

Thank god no one flooded. 

*hears dad tell sisters to go to school*

Well I guess the 2 hour delay has happened

*sisters go to school and then come back like 10 minutes later followed by dad

And what are they doing back so quickly?? I thought I would have some time before I had to go to school. But no they just have to come back. What is they are skipping? But wait dad is with them so maybe they got in trouble. But wait they seem happy. Hmmmm....

*finds out that there are only like 4 teachers at their school so they don't have to go*

Seriously! Why do they not have to go to school. Well I guess I should see what time it is and pray that I don't have to go either.

*dad drives me to school and all of my teachers are they*

Dang it. So now I have to actually learn while there is like a freaking tornado and water and flooding and a bunch of other stuffff!!! That doesn't seem very fun or logical.

*Goes through school day*

Ok half of the kids aren't here because they proably can't even get out of their driveways (like me in the morning). They should have just canceled school. 

That is all I am going to do! I hope you enjoyed this everyone and if you want me to make this into a tag/series say so in the comments below! Have you ever been in a flood? Has your house ever flooded?