June 27, 2008

Hi Everyone,

I thought it was about time to update our blog again. Until now there hasn't been too much out of the norm.

Midwest Flooding
Maybe you have heard about the flooding that's occuring down here. It's not affecting us or our house, thankfully. Our house is on high ground in St. Peters, more than 6.5 miles away from any river. If the flood ever got to our house I think the whole entire city would have to be underwater!

The weather service keeps having to update the crests for the rivers because we keep getting more rain to the north, which is obviously not helping.

Here's a map of our area, north of St. Louis City...
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=11+Santa+Fe+Trail+Ct,+St+Peters,+MO+63376&sll=38.78242,-90.48204&sspn=0.120166,0.211487&ie=UTF8&ll=38.964748,-90.482025&spn=0.479429,0.845947&t=h&z=10

The red dot is where our house is. You may have heard about Winfield, which has been in the news a lot. It's pretty far north of us. We have some friends from church who live up there, but fortunately they are in the western part of the town on high ground. They are affected though - they can no longer take Hwy 79 anywhere, which is a major road up there. They're forced to drive on side roads to get back to the city, which warrants a longer trip. Winfield just had a second levee break early this morning and most of the town along the river has gone underwater.

Here are the flood levels for the map north of St. Louis:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ahps2/index.php?wfo=lsx&view=1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1&toggles=10,7,8,2,9,15,6

You can find local info about the flooding at any of these websites. They've been pretty good about keeping up with information:
http://myfoxstl.com/
http://www.ksdk.com/
http://www.kmov.com/


There's a Pilot in the family now!!!
Yep, Noah has gotten his pilot's license! Congrats to him!!! I'm pretty excited myself because he is planning to take me up for a flight in the next few days. I'm his first official passenger! We're going to get some pictures and I'll post them soon.


The ol' Hum Drum...
Nothing else really that exciting going on down here in the "south", which incidentally is actually the central midwest.

Noah will begin studying for his GRE exam so he can continue grad school. The GRE is required for engineers to get into the meaty portion of their grad school, sort of like the SAT or ACT is required to get into undergrad. So he will be taking the GRE in a few months so he can continue taking classes for his Master's degree. He is REALLY excited about that, let me tell ya... haha!

I'm continuing to play tennis on Wednesdays (every other or sometimes 2 weeks in a row). It's fun, a chance to get outside and get to know more people. I'm actually going to play tomorrow with a friend I met through the league and then we're going to go shopping and do lunch. Fun!

Work is going well for both of us. I just had my 2 year anniversary yesterday, and plan to stay a lot longer! :) Noah has been busy with some local wind tunnel testing and the usual stuff (whatever that is!).

I hope all of you are doing great! Hope to hear from you soon.

Love,
Noah & Krista