Floods

Aside from the New Evil Unpatriots (thought that one up myself folks) winning yesterday it has been a pretty good week for us. We are still in South Bend coping through the tremendous weather changes.
All of the snow that fell during the first week of the year is completely gone. We actually had a couple of days in the upper 60’s. That warmth combined with some rain has caused all kinds of flooding here. The St Joseph River is at least 5 feet higher than it was when I was here in September. Numerous houses and businesses have been evacuated and there isn’t a dry road in the vicinity. Our apartment is on the 2nd floor about three blocks from the river, however there is quite a bit of elevation change between us and the river so we are pretty safe.
Melissa and the kids have been staying home while I have been working various shifts in the ER. I assumed she would be extremely bored, however, she informs me that she is still so excited about having all this free time to relax and play with the kids that she hasn’t minded one bit about being cooped up in the apartment all day.
Spencer had his 5th birthday this week. Aside from my crises at realizing that I am the father of a 5 year-old child the day went really well. Spencer and I went to see the Bee movie with Jerry Seinfeld at the cheap theatre. We bought the biggest drink and popcorn we could and Spencer nearly finished both. He had a great time.
Spencer certainly showed his age yesterday afternoon during our trolley tour of South Bend (more on that shortly). Jessi was in a particularly loud mood and had been yelling quite loudly in her banter with Kristian and the tour guide (who was also a member of the faculty at the residency program) commented to Spencer how loud his sister could yell. Spencer responded by saying: “My mommy can yell louder, she yells in my face a lot.” Melissa was obviously mortified, but it was pretty funny.
The reason we were on a trolley in the first place was that we spent Friday and Saturday at the Saint Joseph’s hospital residency program 2nd look weekend. The residency invited all the applicant’s to come back to town for another weekend to take a closer look at the program. The activities included a trolley tour of South Bend, and most importantly, Notre Dame Campus. An interesting tidbit about the campus is that there are two decent sized lakes that used to be one lake. Apparently if a body of water is of a certain size the state takes possession of it, so in order to maintain ownership of the entire campus Notre Dame filled in a portion of land in the middle of the lake to create two smaller lakes that could legally remain their property. We also went to the college football hall of fame. That was somewhat enjoyable for me, but not as much as it will be when Doug comes to visit next year and we spend an afternoon in the hall without the kids.
We were privileged to spend the evening eating at a very nice restaurant while someone else watched our three children. The meal was excellent as was the company and we came home with a renewed excitement about the possibility of moving out here.
We are looking forward to our trip out to Cleveland to visit Doug and Maegan this weekend. There may not be an email next week so you better enjoy this one.