July 4th extended weekend

Hello, Beryl.

We had family over for the Fourth of July, which landed on a Thursday. Lately I've been obsessed with smash burgers (recently ate at Stuffed Belly and Trill Burgers) so I wanted to make my own.

Burgers and fries for the Fourth of July.

On Saturday, we drove out to the Kemah Boardwalk to drop off Tyson and his friend at a birthday party. Since it was such a far drive, we decided to spend our time at the boardwalk for its duration. 

Played games.

Elliot in art.

Why pay for a hurricane simulator when you can experience it for free? 😅

Goodbye, Kemah.

On Sunday, Lynn and I had planned to go camping (outside of Austin) but the projected path of Hurricane Beryl kept creeping further north with landfall expected on late Sunday night to early Monday morning. I had an image of us driving back on Monday in torrential rainfall and the kids "home alone" listening to the howls of hurricane force winds as they wait for our return home.  Just to be safe, I canceled our plans. 

Monday morning, Beryl arrived. Notice how much our trees were leaning from the winds.

So much debris.

Nothing else to do but sleep.

And it's a good thing we didn't go because that storm was much worse than I had expected. The storm only lasted for a few hours but the damage was done. Trees down. Debris strewed everywhere. We lost power, along with over 2 million people. It quickly got hot without A/C. Luckily, Lynn's sister Julie had electricity and just like the recent freeze a couple of years ago, we were refugees once again. 

Refugee camp.

Electricity was restored by Tuesday afternoon and we were back home by that evening.