So Allison came home from school on Thursday after graduation in time for a dentist appointment. On Friday we were busy packing for our weekend Memorial trip, dropping off Cookie at the dog kennel, cutting the lawn and visiting with my mom. I took her out for a hair appointment before the long weekend. Tom had to work so we did not get to leave for our Busch Gardens weekend until Saturday morning. The weekend before I had my van at the car dealership, checking on the brakes. They kept slipping and clunking and I was getting really annoyed(and a little nervous). My front rotars needed replaced mostly and new pads for the back wheels. So much better! I know Tom wanted to keep working on the car to save some money with online parts, but brakes are a bit important and I really wanted to make sure the car was safe for any upcoming road trips. And now I am ready.
Our neighbors Dan and Gloria stopped by during the week to let us know that they had decided to head down to Busch Gardens as well to enjoy the opening of the Food and Wine Festival over Memorial Weekend. They both needed a break since Gloria decided to quit her current nursing manager position. The position was too stressful and she had had enough. She decided she is going to look into a floor position working with psychiatric patients and give up the manager spots for now. I am not sure that that is any less stressful, but it is a change. She'd actually enjoy retiring however their youngest son just got accepted into Grad school for Political Science/Environmental sciences and they can use the income and to plan for retirement. They also could use some furniture for his dorm room in Delaware. Unfortunately they asked us for Allison's condo furniture a bit too late. Allison already promised most of the large furniture to a fellow frisbee teammate. We need to travel back to Salisbury in July to unload the rest of the condo furniture.
So Dan and Gloria left on Friday before the Holiday weekend and got stuck in horrible traffic. We left early Saturday morning and faired better with lighter traffic. We all decided to head to the water park on Saturday afternoon. The weather was predicted to be warmer with no rain on Saturday. We had a lot of fun on the rides and lounging around Hubba Hubba Highway-the lazy river. And no tstorms. Afterwards we all headed out to dinner at our favorite Chinese buffet. The rain moved in during the evening hours, but we still enjoyed a fireworks show at Busch Gardens that evening looking out our window of our hotel room.
On Sunday we were headed to Busch Gardens to enjoy some rides and lots of nibbling at all the food booths and sipping some spirits. It was incredibly hot and we got through the park and lots of munching and drinking late in the afternoon. We decided to take a shopping break at the outlet stores looking for work clothes for Allison and then headed to the Movie Tavern for dinner and the new Star Wars Solo movie(which we really enjoyed). Back at the hotel we noticed our phones buzzing non stop with news of Ellicott City and severe floods. Again. While we were enjoying our blazing hot, sunny weekend in Virginia, Maryland was getting blasted with 10 inches of rain in one hour. Once again Olde Ellicott City was turned into a raging river as cars were washed away, buildings were destroyed and lives were at risk. A National Guard volunteer was killed trying to assist a resident as she tried to escape the flood waters with her cat. The same flooding destroyed the town in 2016 and before any improvements could be initiated on managing the flood waters, the town was hit again with worse damage. It appeared that a perfect storm came through-a tropical depression Alberto from the south and a rain storm from the north and they met over Ellicott City. Even our own neighborhood suffered areas of flooding with lots of stranded drivers in their cars as they stalled out on flooded streets. Dan and Gloria's son assisted several stranded neighbors as their cars stalled out in the flood waters in front of their house. A young couple had a close call as their pick up truck was washed off the road into our drainage stream and the young girl was sucked out of the vehicle trying to escape. She was sucked through the drainage pipe in the flood waters under the road and pulled out on the other side by a passerby. Thank goodness. Fortunately no flooding or damage to our house.
Ironically, our neighborhood just had a meeting with county officials to continue the discussion(and our fight)against further development in our neighborhood. There is a strong belief that with all the extra building in our area, it allows the flood waters to just come crashing through the neighborhoods with nothing in the way to slow down or collect the extra water. Not so surprisingly, the rest of the scheduled meetings to discuss further building in our neighborhood have been postponed. We are hoping some good will come out of the flooding with better land management ideas and less over building. And now the County and residents are struggling with a decision to rebuild Olde Ellicott City(again) or to condemn the city completely. For now, the fund raisers to help out the shop owners and employees of Olde Ellicott City have begun(again).
Turns out that it was a good thing Dan and Sheila did not come visit over the weekend. I had planned on taking them out to dinner in Olde Ellicott City on the day of the huge storm and flood. They had to fly back to Houston to help their kids move back home from their Universities. And sadly, Scott had been looking forward to celebrating his graduation with dinner at the local mexican restaurant. Looks like we will have to wait on that.
We headed back home on Monday, Memorial Day. We were disappointed that we missed our friend's 60th Birthday party on Sunday, but I am not sure how well their pool party turned out since it was scheduled on the day of the flood. We seemed to do well in our choice to go out of town! We still had time in the evening to unpack the car, throw some chicken on the new grill rotisserie and pick up Mom for dinner and Cookie from the dog kennel.
On Tuesday I took off work to attend Scott's high school graduation ceremony in the morning. I brought Allison and Scott to the ceremony at our local outdoor theater and Tom met us after putting in a few hours of work in the morning. We enjoyed a wonderful ceremony and lunch out together at BJs Tavern before heading home.
Scott was done with school having finished his finals the week before. He picked up an all A's report card along with his diploma. He is so excited to be done with high school and on the road to college. And both kids were very excited for our upcoming trip to London! Tom sat down Tuesday night to organize all our paperwork for our international visit, including organizing our passports. We obtained passports for the kids several years ago since it was recommended that everyone have a passport after 9-11. Tom and I both had passports prior since Tom did quite a bit of traveling for work and at times I would join him. So we figured we were all set and proud of ourselves for thinking ahead. Turns out that when Scott had his 18th Birthday last November, his passport became null and void even though it wasn't expired. Apparently there are kids passports and adult passports and you need one after turning 18. So we had 5 days to get him a new passport! First things first-I ran him up to the Walgreen's to get a passport photo Tuesday night, 1 hour before they closed. I also gathered up all his personal paperwork while Tom went online to figure out how to obtain a passport as soon as possible. There is a service that can walk your paperwork through for a fee, but they thought we would have better luck taking our forms right down to the immigration office in DC. So guess what Tom and Scott did on Weds! They got up very early and took a train down to the office in DC. They were the first ones in the door and able to drop off their paperwork which was a miracle since most everyone has a scheduled appointment. The office rarely can handle walk ins, but since they arrived first thing in the morning, they had an open slot. However, the passport would not be ready until Thursday afternoon, so they spent some time exploring the area and headed home.
On Thursday, Tom needed to head back to work so Allison headed down to DC with Scott to pick up the finished passport. It would not be ready until after 2pm, so they headed down early to visit some of the museums and monuments. They had a great time exploring DC and stopping into a few Smithsonian museums before picking up his passport. Yeah! Our trip was still on! That was a close one.
On Friday we were all busy packing, cleaning and doing laundry. I also took Cookie in to get a hair cut before dropping her off to our friends house for the week. We dropped her off on Saturday so we would have more time to pack and leave for the airport on Sunday. The weekend was basically spent getting ready for our big trip and cleaning up the house, doing yard work. I also picked up Mom B for a hair appointment and dinner at our house on Saturday since it was going to be awhile before we would
As soon as we get back from London we will be heading to Michigan for Scott's college orientation at Western!
Cheers!
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