The Tuckers

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Snow!

We had snow on Friday! The weather forecasters were predicting it, but in Houston I never believe it will happen until it is does. Austin had snow Thursday evening and I know others who woke up in the middle of the night to see it falling in and around Houston. We slept while it fell, but I did wake up early to see if we had snow and we did! I had heard it wouldn't stick so I thought I'd miss it, but it was a small layer of snow everywhere!

I went a little nuts taking photos (was a little late to work..worth it!) Driving to work was more interesting than usual, seeing families out playing in it and others out with child-like grins on their place as they just take it in. This has been a rough year, so its good to have some weather that makes the city happy, and is photographic for its beauty and not its destruction.

Its a bit surreal to me to see a pool surrounded by snow -- and no I don't want to go for a swim! I had to get my arms wet this weekend to clean the pool, and that was enough for me. Our first winter and we've already had snow. I think the last time it snowed was our first winter at the old house (2009), there was no snow while we lived in the townhouse.

This weekend we were also able to have our first fire in the fireplace, we had to have it repaired and the work was done on Saturday. I didn't realize how much I had missed the sound and beauty of a fire in the fireplace.

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Wednesday musings

Some random thoughts for this (finally) chilly Wednesday.

I went to my first ever Lady Gaga concert this weekend. She is an amazing performer....and I had a great time with my sister and her friend. We made it a girls' night really nearly a girls weekend for me, and it was just what I needed! I knew I wouldn't want to drive back home afterwards so I'd booked a hotel (across the street from the venue) and taken Monday off work. It worked out well to get to get ready at the hotel, uber to a place to eat (we'd planned to walk but it was raining), and had a little slumber party time with my sister afterwards, and spent the day with her on Monday.
I highly recommend nights out with friends, trying to get Kevin to put one together with his friends too. Don't get me wrong we love spending time together, we just also need that friend bonding time.
I also realize I really enjoy having an event a ways off in the future to look forward to, I've known it for travel but I think I should take that approach with in-town events too. I plan to look for a 2018 event that we'd both enjoy
We have finally started on our Christmas shopping, I always feel like I'm behind but at least I've started checking folks off my list -- I have to get on it since we are doing Christmas early as we will be out of town on Christmas.
We are terrible at getting gifts for each other, but honestly we need some big ticket items so to me that works well as our gifts to each other/ourselves.....on our list this year - fixing our fireplace so we can have a fire; possibly a new computer.

I may come back and add to this, but am posting for now so it doesn't becoming "musings from days ago..."

Sunday, November 5, 2017

World Series Champs!

The World Series went better than we could've imagined! Astros won it for the first time ever!

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of late night games - and squeezing in a delicious birthday dinner before the Astros' first World Series win!

We knew there was a chance there would be a parade if they won (we wouldn't even say the word to not jinx it). Once it was announced we knew we had to be a part of it.

I was able to take the afternoon off work (it'll all be there on Monday) and we were two of about a million people who lined the streets, and parking garages on Friday. We'd planned to take light rail but heard it was backed up so just walked it through downtown -- there were so many people and it was a sea of orange.

As short as I am I couldn't see very much of the parade, but did see the players and the trophy (they were on fire trucks and double deckers buses) and just being in the crowd was a great feeling. Kevin's brother (a huge baseball fan) made it too and brought our niece and nephew. I still don't know how they found us, but am so glad they did. It made it even better to share the experience with them -- and my niece had a great seat - on a mini-van. I did feel a little badly putting her on the car of someone we didn't know, but she was able to see the parade and didn't damage the car (sadly others' cars did get damaged by people standing on them). They walked even further than we did, and we all walked back to my office garage to pick up our car (mapping it we all walked over 2 miles). We found a spot we could get to and let some of the traffic die out and had some delicious pizza and tasted mac and cheese balls (so good, glad there were 5 of us to split the 3 balls - nephew must have a hollow leg as he ate a whole one).

We got Keith back to his car and Kevin and I had a drink at another spot in our old neighborhood to let even more of the traffic clear out.

Sunday, October 22, 2017

World Series bound

The Astros are back in the World Series!!!!

Its the first time since 2005, and we are so excited for it. I did a quick search for ticket prices, and looks like we'll be watching at home -- over $700 for standing room only?!?!

I should get to watch more of it this time. I watched what I could in 2005, but was also in grad school so I had classes multiple nights a week, and even had an exam during the first game in Houston (and on my birthday). Our professor did let us see the text-based view of the game online during our test, and I got out early enough to meet my boyfriend (now husband) at a viewing party..

Here's hoping this series goes better for Houston, it couldn't happen at a better time for our city as we still work to recover from Harvey.

Today we'll be hunting for league champ shirts!

Saturday, October 7, 2017

pool project

The Houston area is still very much in recovery mode, and we are doing what we can to help. We also realize at the same time that life goes on, and one way we can help is to make sure area businesses have customers so we decided to go ahead and with a project we were looking at before Harvey. We wanted to get a rotten wooden walkway replaced (it was getting to be a hazard with loose boards) and also get the decking around the pool - which was several surfaces (pavers, rocks that hurt to step on) redone to be one consistent surface and easier on the feet.

With the issues Kevin's mom has had with her fall at their pool we were very aware that it needs to be non-slip, and went with a company that uses a rubber material. They did it all a couple of weeks ago and we are very happy with it. The walkway really shows the change -- before/during/after below, and it is really bouncy since there isn't concrete under it but rather layers and layers of rubber. The rest of it is more solid since they were able to put it on top of the existing concrete/pavers.

Seems a shame we got to it as pool season is ending, but we will still enjoy it this fall and for many years to come!