Thursday, December 15, 2011
Maggie Jane and (Great) Grandma Jane
Maggie LOVES her Grandma Jane (aka Gran Gran). She loves to crawl up the stairs to go and visit her and play with all her fun toys and to give her loves! The other day Ryan snapped this photo of them in the morning sharing a bowl of cereal. I absolutely adore this picture and I think it will be one that will be on our family pic wall forever!
Sunday, December 4, 2011
The "Storm" of December 2011
As I am sure many of you have all had your own accounts and experience with the terrible wind storm that we all experienced from Davis-Weber county and even into southern Cali....here is my version of what happened to my family that day. Beware that this is a long post because I want to write down all I can for my own sake and memory!
First off lets just say that I expected winds, but NOT category 2 hurricane winds!
So it all started off at 5:30 am when I woke up because of the noisy wind and noticed Ryan was not home. He had left for work early that day at 4am. Since I couldn't go back to sleep I decided to take a shower and start getting ready for work since Maggie was still asleep (and I have NO idea how on earth she slept through all the noise!). As I was showering, and right in the middle of shampooing the power went out. Now mind you that we are in the basement and it was still very very dark so my shower suddenly became pitch black! I was able to figure out by smell which bottles were what and was able to finish my shower! Right as I got out of the shower I suddenly heard Grandma Jane start hollering out the window! I had no idea what was going on and was naked (obviously) from just getting out of the shower so I hurried and got dressed and ran upstairs! It turns out that our pine tree that was next to the driveway was blown over (and she watched it happen)! I couldn't believe it! That tree had been there for over 50 years!
I quickly called Ryan and told him that the tree blew over and I was trapped in the driveway so I couldn't get the car to go to work and he quickly responded by first asking if the roots were showing and my response was "uh...yeah! The tree just BLEW OVER!" then he responded by second saying that traffic was horrible because several semi-trucks had already blown over and I probably wouldn't have made it into work anyways because they were closing off parts of the freeway to clean the messes up! So, Ryan came home (his boss is so amazing and nice and told him to go take care of his home and family), and called his dad to make sure he didn't have to go into work because he drives a semi for UPS (and luckily he didn't have to go in because of the wind) and together they started chopping up the tree to get it cleaned up and out of the way!
As the day progressed we saw so much damage and destruction through out our neighbor hood! If you looked up our street all you saw was pine tree after pine tree blown over onto houses, or the road! Siding completely ripped off of homes. Carports, swamp coolers, and shingles from several roofs (including ours) all blown off! It was (and still is) so sad! We were one of the lucky ones that the tree didn't damage much, but if Ryan had not have gone into work early his truck would have been smashed to oblivion's! I also thought that the tree blew out our power, but we were very very lucky in the fact that the power went out before the tree blew over because it was on our power lines!
West Bountiful didn't have power until about 10pm that evening but there are still (two days later) some homes throughout Davis county that still don't have power!
According to the weather another storm is coming and the winds aren't going to be as strong but still up to 75 mph gust! So my hubby along with several other men are out and about at this very moment trying to strap down all the debris through out our neighbor hood so that it doesn't cause more damage! Also they predict that more trees will fall because they were loosened from the first storm! That makes me very nervous because we have another pine tree just to the north east corner of our house that is even larger than the first tree that blew over and quite honestly we were very surprised it didn't come down with the first storm!
(On another note our chickens, and their coop survived! I half expected them to have no feathers after how strong the wind was! They are even laying eggs still!)
So that is my account. What an adventure! I hope that all who were involved in this storm are OK and that their damage can be repaired! Good luck to you all!
First off lets just say that I expected winds, but NOT category 2 hurricane winds!
So it all started off at 5:30 am when I woke up because of the noisy wind and noticed Ryan was not home. He had left for work early that day at 4am. Since I couldn't go back to sleep I decided to take a shower and start getting ready for work since Maggie was still asleep (and I have NO idea how on earth she slept through all the noise!). As I was showering, and right in the middle of shampooing the power went out. Now mind you that we are in the basement and it was still very very dark so my shower suddenly became pitch black! I was able to figure out by smell which bottles were what and was able to finish my shower! Right as I got out of the shower I suddenly heard Grandma Jane start hollering out the window! I had no idea what was going on and was naked (obviously) from just getting out of the shower so I hurried and got dressed and ran upstairs! It turns out that our pine tree that was next to the driveway was blown over (and she watched it happen)! I couldn't believe it! That tree had been there for over 50 years!
(This was at about 6am just after the tree blew over)
I quickly called Ryan and told him that the tree blew over and I was trapped in the driveway so I couldn't get the car to go to work and he quickly responded by first asking if the roots were showing and my response was "uh...yeah! The tree just BLEW OVER!" then he responded by second saying that traffic was horrible because several semi-trucks had already blown over and I probably wouldn't have made it into work anyways because they were closing off parts of the freeway to clean the messes up! So, Ryan came home (his boss is so amazing and nice and told him to go take care of his home and family), and called his dad to make sure he didn't have to go into work because he drives a semi for UPS (and luckily he didn't have to go in because of the wind) and together they started chopping up the tree to get it cleaned up and out of the way!
 |
| Just to get an idea of how tall the roots are (Ryan is 6'4 and his dad is about 6'5 or 6'6 |
As the day progressed we saw so much damage and destruction through out our neighbor hood! If you looked up our street all you saw was pine tree after pine tree blown over onto houses, or the road! Siding completely ripped off of homes. Carports, swamp coolers, and shingles from several roofs (including ours) all blown off! It was (and still is) so sad! We were one of the lucky ones that the tree didn't damage much, but if Ryan had not have gone into work early his truck would have been smashed to oblivion's! I also thought that the tree blew out our power, but we were very very lucky in the fact that the power went out before the tree blew over because it was on our power lines!
 |
| This is looking north on our street. It is kind of hard to see, but if you look closely you can see the pine tree blocking the road! |
 |
| This is another home in our neighborhood |
 |
| This home (by my in-laws) comepletly lost their fence! |
According to the weather another storm is coming and the winds aren't going to be as strong but still up to 75 mph gust! So my hubby along with several other men are out and about at this very moment trying to strap down all the debris through out our neighbor hood so that it doesn't cause more damage! Also they predict that more trees will fall because they were loosened from the first storm! That makes me very nervous because we have another pine tree just to the north east corner of our house that is even larger than the first tree that blew over and quite honestly we were very surprised it didn't come down with the first storm!
(On another note our chickens, and their coop survived! I half expected them to have no feathers after how strong the wind was! They are even laying eggs still!)
So that is my account. What an adventure! I hope that all who were involved in this storm are OK and that their damage can be repaired! Good luck to you all!
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