Tag Archives: Pacific Northwest

Getting Snowed In!

Good morning!

I am not sure if you know this, but a good portion of the Pacific Northwest was snowed in this past weekend. Snow, in and of itself here is quite the novelty because it happens so rarely, and when it does it never lasts more than 24 hours at a time. Not this time however! YEAH!

1Our city was having such a difficult time keeping up with the snow coming in and clearing the roads that they put a ban on driving unless you had chains or studded tires, which we have neither. So we decided that it would be fun to go for a walk and see what was going on outside, and boy am I glad we did! 🙂

2Everything was just covered, and it somehow made everything extra especially beautiful! 🙂

3My sweetie and I instantly reverted back to our five-year-old selves and couldn’t help but play in the snow.

4Unfortunately the snow was very powdery and would not form a snowball if our lives depended on it, but we still managed to end up COVERED in snow!! 🙂

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6Snow angels anyone???

7This snow was so deep and soft that when I fell back to start my snow angel it literally felt like a cold pillow – it was AWESOME!! I couldn’t get Jason to join me – he has such a hard time getting warmed up after being cold that he wasn’t willing to risk it!!

8This is a view of the creek by our place! 🙂

9It was so quiet out here, besides the random car that would come by maybe once every 5 or 10 minutes, it was just so peaceful to listed to the wind, and the creek burble by as the snow just continued to fall.

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12I think I love the snow covered trees the best! 🙂

13This weekend actually saw two snow storms come through, one right after the other. This walk and all of these pictures were taken after snow storm number 1, so it even got much MUCH deeper than this the very next day!!! 🙂

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15To keep warm, Jason and I had to put an obnoxious amounts of layers on, as neither one of us have proper snow attire!

16I am not sure how many layers Jason had, but in this picture I am wearing, leggings,  jeans (ones that are 5 sizes too large), a belt to hold all of this up, a tank top, t-shirt, long pajamas, sweater, jacket, scarf, another jacket (again 5 sizes too large), winter socks, galoshes, and two pairs of gloves! I felt a little like the kid on the Christmas Story – heaven forbid if I should fall down – I would NEVER have been able to get back up without some serious help!! 🙂

17Catching the falling snow on my tongue! (NO, not pulling a Miley!!) 😉

18Jason was getting some much needed movement, AKA running, in the snow! Between the two of us, he was the one who was getting the most stir-crazy!! There were moments I thought he was going to just pop right out of his skin!! Me being a homebody, I was in COMPLETE HEAVEN!!! 🙂

19Don’t we look happy???

We were pretty much not allowed to drive all weekend, which equaled 3 days in total, so we made due by trying to do as many fun activities as possible. We played Phase 10, Yahtzee, read books, competed against each other on Wii Sports, caught up on some Hulu, raced to see who could put an extremely colorful 500 piece puzzle together fastest, baked some goodies, made a big pot of chili – my sweetie’s favorite! I took a short nap – which is something that I NEVER get to do!! 🙂

All in all, this was a pretty AMAZING weekend, one that I am sure will not happen again for quite some time – the last weekend like that for us was in 2008, so I am going to have to revisit these pictures often and just remember what an ABSOLUTELY PERFECT stay-at-home weekend this was! 🙂

Here is to looking for the MAGICAL MOMENTS in every day life! 🙂

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If you want to have a different life, you have to live differently!!

Flood Warning!

Good evening!

It has been a really busy here, in my little hometown. We have been dealing with the first day of a very heavy rainstorm, and man has it been a doozy! It is expected to rain throughout the next week, and even though it has only rained hard one day, there has been flooding all over town already. The newscasters are calling this a 40 year event, it happens so rarely. Matter of fact, the street I live on is really flooded – so much so that it is closed, and most of it has been evacuated – SCARY!! My sweetie helped our neighbors fill sandbags, and thankfully our condo is safe for now, we are on a little bit higher ground than most of the other homeowners in our area, so I think we will be alright.

While at the office today, I, along with two of my co-workers, decided to go for a little walk to see what kind of flooding was happening. We knew that the creek that runs along side the hospital had crested, and was flooding the main back street into the hospital, so we wanted to see it for ourselves.

I am not sure exactly how to describe this picture, but normally there is at least a 10-15  foot drop here, some grass, and a very light creek that runs under the hospital. Obviously, not today!

This is a picture of where the creek that runs alongside the back of the hospital. It normally runs within the two rows of trees pictured here. I have worked at the hospital for over 11 years, and I have NEVER seen the creek get this high before.

Here is the same overflowing creek, but this is the park that sits alongside the creek. What you can’t see is that this water is so high that all of the picnic tables are completely submerged, and off to the right, which is not shown in the picture, there is a building that is about 1/4 submerged. Sad! This is usually the place we take our walking breaks! It is usually so peaceful here.

Here is half of the stairway that leads down to this park. The other half is underwater!

Here is the creek right behind my little building at the hospital.

It is crazy fast, and sounds beautifully loud. It would be fun to be able to go kayaking in the middle of my workday here!! LOL!! 😉

I feel bad for all of these trees. There is so much debris being carried in the swift moving creek, that I am sure that these poor trees are just getting battered!!

It is kind of hard to see here, but this is a large trunk of a broken tree that has been brought downstream and is just banging into this bridge. Eventually so much water was coming over the bridge walls, that the police ended up cordoning off this section and closed the street down.

It is amazing how voluminous one rain storm can make all of these creeks around here. I am hoping that the water will slowly start to recede now that we have had a few hours of clear skies, but I hear we have a second rainstorm hitting tomorrow. EEK!! AND, working at the hospital, they have activated a disaster code, so all of staff are working 12 hour shifts, 24/7 this weekend. It is going to be a LOOOOOONG week until next weekend. I pray that I get to have at least one day off this week, I am most definitely going to need a break!!

Anyway, I will keep you posted on how things are going. My prayers go out to all of the families whose homes are truly affected with all of this flooding, and I thank God that he has kept my family and my hairy four-legged  girls safe!

Have a FABULOUS evening! :-)

“If you want to have a different life, live differently!”