Wednesday, December 26, 2007

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, or am I?

If you haven't heard yet we had a white Christmas this year. We got up around 9:00 AM and made breakfast and opened gifts. When all the gifts were open I thought that we could take the cardboard and paper out to the burn pit in the back yard before it started to rain. when I looked outside i saw the first flakes starting to fall. I told Try and he could not believe it he thought that I was kidding around. In all we received about an inch of snow.

At around 2:00 PM we we climbed into the Chevy and wade the short trip down the hill to my mom's house for dinner and cheesecake. Toby received all kinds of clothes and toys. He even tried to open a few gifts by himself you know by slobbering on them until the paper was soft enough that it would just fall apart.

After the festivities with Grandma Debi and Grandpa Joe whe payed a visit to the Cash house to see Tom and Ester. They has company over and we cought them just in time for dinner. We had been invited to share in the feast but we were so stuffed from eating earlier in the day. Toby seemed to be really hot at Toms so we stripped himn down to his skivies and he decided to take a nap.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I know we sure did. This was by far my favorite Christmas so far. I can not wait until next year, I have already started shopping for new things for Toby to open. I want to thank everyone for making this a year to remember.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Silent night,

Well it is the night before Christmas and all the presets are wrapped and under the tree. Toby is in his Christmas PJ's and he has gone to bed. I can't wait until morning as usual. This is my absolute favorite day in the whole year. I never sleep on Christmas Eve.

Any way here are some photos from this evening.







Saturday, December 22, 2007

Busy, Busy

My goodness it seems like only a minute has passed and here it has been almost three whole weeks. For those of you that wished that i would update faster I do apologize.

Well here it is, to start after I had last updated Toby spent his first night over at Grandma Debi's and Grandpa Joe's to give me a night off for my birthday. He did really good he whent to bed on time and I was there in the morning when he woke up.

After that he caught a little cold that lasted the next week and since I am around him and his drooly fingers 24/7 I caught the little bug. We were both sick for one whole week, it was awful. I tell ya,there is nothing worse than caring for a sick fussy baby when you yourself feel; the same way as they do. However we both made it through it.

This week I have been really busy with property inspections due to both the flooding and the unfortunate rise in foreclosures. This week alone I had 30 reports just for foreclosures and 20 for disaster damage. Toby and i spent most of Wednesday and Thursday in the car. Probably about 14 hours overall this week until Friday. On Friday we did not go anywhere for work but we did make it to aunt Paula's house for dinner and presents.

Today i spent 10 hours in the car driving around finishing up my inspection. Thank goodness for my mom and Joe. they watched Toby all day, I don't think he would have done one more day out on the road with me. As it was on Thursday he was so mad at me and Friday he did not want to be in his car seat for the short ride to Paula's.

I still have a lot of work to do on the computer and one more day of driving around but nothing like the past three trips. I have to get all of my work done by close of business Eastern time Monday, which isn't even a full day so really I have until 11:00 AM Pacific Time. This wouldn't be so bad but all of the sites are down and I am at a stand still with about 2 whole days work to submit.

As for the damage report from our storm our road will be closed until late spring early summer. I take this as being more like late summer early fall, you know county projects never go as planned. I have driven around the canal twice since the storm and i can not believe the damage. Some places you would not even recognise. I saw a house today that had been ripped in half by a landslide that had occurred in the back yard. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen the house was just bent like a toothpick with its siding all splintered outward. The saddest part about this was that i had seen the home owners over the summer re-side and install new windows.

Any way, for those of you who need to see pictures here are some of the latest of the Tobester.







Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Wow, What Weather We Have Had

Well if you haven't hear or if you are not in the area, what a crazy weekend and beginning to this week it has been. It all started on Saturday morning wee woke at 6:00 Am to snow it seemed a little early in the season it only being the 1st of December but it had snowed on Tuesday but not enough to stick around it just fell from the sky but it did;t stick to anything. Well this snow was sticking and it was falling and sticking fast.



We had a birthday party to go to it was Kierens Birth Day party Toby's cousin we couldn't miss it.



By the time we came home from Aunt Paula's house we had 5 inches of snow. Around 10 O'clock Saturday night the snow had turned to rain and we thought that it was the end and that by morning the snow would be history. Boy were we ever wrong. When we woke on Sunday morning it was snowing harder than the day before by the end of it all we had received over a foot of snow.







Late Sunday night it tuned to rain and that is when the craziness began.
Monday morning I was out early shoveling trenches in our yard to divert the rain and snow drainage away from our septic tank as it was starting to overflow, YUCK!!! After being outside after only 2 minutes in a thick jacket i was soaked to the bone. Poor Scotch Dog tried to hide from the rain under the deck in the back yard but the wind just blew the water right onto him, poor thing. Our closest neighbor had her basement flooded with three feet of water and her yard and the driveway leading directly to our house was a lake. I wish I had taken a picture but I don't think it would have turned out I only have one with snow.



This whole area where the deep snow is, is where the water was it was about 1.5 feet deep in the driveway and more on either side.



This is one of our neighbor's houses after the water started to recede a little. This Gray house sits right next to our driveway and the water was in their basement. There is a small creek to the left of the house that under normal weather conditions you would not even know it was there.



This is the creek bed to the west of the house above. This is about 20 yards from our driveway. Just to the right (not shown) the road is starting to go down into an embankment. I walked past it today on the way to the corner store to see how bad it had gotten since yesterday, the dirt is completely washed away from under the pavement and the road is closed at our driveway to Clear Creek Road until further notice.



This is the driveway right before ours there are two homes behind the white home that were fully engulfed in water.



This is a picture of the Marine gate of Bangor Naval Base look to the north, it does not do it justice. If you could have only seen it. There is a large storm drain outlet just south of the gate that was shooting water out as if it were a fire hose. Just imagine this drainage outlet is a four foot by 2 foot outlet and it was spewing water out at an astonishing rate.



This is a single wide manufactured home located on the west side of Clear Creek Rd across the street from our corner store. In all I believe that at least a square half mile of property was under water in this area. It was incredible, I have never seen anything like it. If you think that this was Clear Creek that did this you, are wrong. It was just a small stream that feeds into Clear Creek downstream a little ways closer to Silverdale that did this damage. If you were to see Clear Creek at Mountain View on Monday you would have thought that it was the small stream. Clear Creek itself did not crest its banks hardly at all.

Well I will keep you all poosted on the damge as we are still getting hit with some pretty hard winds.