As If The Snow Wasn't Enough!

Oh the joys of home ownership!

Friday night, John woke me at 11 pm with news of a leak in our kitchen - water coming through the roof and into one of our kitchen cabinets.

John climbed up on the roof, and found the source of the leak, and was able to get it sealed the next morning.

Unfortunately, we started getting another leak - this time, water started leaking through the ceiling fan/light fixture above the kitchen table.  We thought it might be water left over from the cabinet leak, so we placed buckets, and waited.  However, this morning, Carleigh informed me that, "there's a big bubble in the ceiling".  Water had pooled along a seam in the sheetrock in the ceiling just next to the ceiling fan.  We poked a hole in the "bubble" to drain the water and keep it from spreading.  You can see the "bubble" in the picture below - it was bigger, but shrank up quite a bit when the hole was poked.

Knowing that we were dealing with something much more serious, we called and started the claim process with our insurance company, and we were able to get ahold of a company that does these types of repairs, and they sent a three-man crew out this afternoon.

We now have a hole in the ceiling that is about 8 ft. x 8 ft.  In addition, we have a large section out of the wall in a closet in our master bathroom, that opens into the attic above the kitchen area with the leak.

It sounds like it will be a pretty long process to get it fixed - they are going to do a temporary fix now, and come back in the spring to finish up the repairs on the roof.  Also, we seem to have the same problem in the garage, so we may have a lot more repairs to be done as part of the same insurance claim.

Here are a few more pictures of the damage.  

These next pictures were taken from the closet in our bathroom.

The black on the wood is mold...not a good thing!

Here you can see the "contamination zone" in the kitchen:

And...just to keep you up to date on the snowfall:

The snowplow came by this morning...after the garbage truck got stuck...

Here is the same tree of which I've posted other pictures.  Just to give you some perspective, it is a 7ft. tree, and only about 3 feet of it is showing:

Here you can see the same tree in the yard.  This is looking down our walkway from the front door.


This picture is also taken from the front step - looking to the left along the front of the house.

Santa Made It!!

What an early morning!  The girls were awake at 3am...but John managed to coax them back to bed.  We agreed to let them wake us up at 6am - and they did!

As always, we started with the stockings...filled to the rim with candy, games, Starbucks gift cards, ...




The Wii was definitely a hit!

A few other highlights:

Carleigh's American Girl Doll - she has been named "Lisa"

New fishing reel for Tyler - he's thrilled!

Silly Alyssa!  She loves frogs and turtles - this was a gift from Carleigh.

Now Alyssa can start cooking dinner for all of us...

Carleigh's babydoll from Santa - she has been named "Carrie" - after baby Carrie from Little House on the Prairie - her class has been reading "Little House in the Big Woods" at school.

Tyler is such a good babysitter!

Gifts from Auntie and Uncle - a puzzle and a beautiful edition of "The Gift of the Magi".

Hope you are all having a wonderful day - I'll try to post more pics later.

Christmas Eve Gathering

Dave, Jen, Gabe, Alex, Luke, and Savanna joined us for some cookies, visiting, and a little bit of Rock Band on the XBox 360.

After some begging by Carleigh:

We let the kids each open 1 gift - a new ornament for the tree.

Carleigh's is a Precious Moments girl holding a string of bells.

Tyler's is a shiny blue ball with Jimmie Johnson's "48" on each side.

Alyssa's is a ball with some of New York's highlights.  I picked it up at the gift shop at the Empire State Building in October - she was quite surprised - and had a hard time figuring out how I managed to get it and get it home without her seeing it.  :)

Christmas Eve Buck

We awoke in the morning to find a 4-point buck in our neighbor's back yard - bordering our back yard.  He appeared to have an injured hind leg, so he was in no hurry to jump the fence to leave.  He hung around for a good hour or so, before finally being scared away by the neighbor's dogs.

He was a large buck, which just goes to show how deep the snow is!

Still?!?!?!

Yes, it is still snowing!  OK, it hasn't been continuous - but it sure feels like it.  We are getting hit pretty hard again today.

We did venture out of the house a bit - had to get out to finish our Christmas shopping - and to make sure the kids got a chance to see Santa.

So much for "global warming" - I say, bring it on!

Snow Day!

WOW! You know, we thought last January's snow was bad...and we've been cautiously optimistic about this winter - we made it to mid-December with no real snow to speak of. But...so much for optimism - we are looking at possible record snowfall for a 24 hour period, and we have already beat the snowfall totals from last January!

The snow started yesterday morning, and it has not stopped yet.  Here are a few pics that I have taken.

I took this from my office downtown yesterday - early afternoon.  There was visibility of only about 4 blocks.

This next picture was taken last night.  This is our old artificial Christmas Tree, which is currently standing tall in our front yard.

The snow continued all night - here is the same tree as of this morning:

At about 6:30 this morning, here is the pile on our back deck.  In case you can't see the numbers, there was 18 inches - and it is still snowing!

Just for a little perspective, here the kids are standing just inside the door, with the pile on the deck showing behind them.

The kids' school is closed, as are all of the local public schools.  City hall is closed, the hospital has canceled all elective surgeries scheduled for today, and the city transit system has had only a few bus routes open, and it sounds like they may be about to close those also.  They are reporting on the news that there are surrounding areas with as much as 2 feet of snow.

John ventured in to work this morning, and he just called to let me know that he made it safely.  The kids and I will be staying put!

Happy Birthday!

Wow! 11 Years Old!  (OK...not officially until later this week...but close enough to celebrate) Time sure does fly...

There was a definite theme amongst Alyssa's gifts - art, art, art...

A collection of supplies - acrylic paints and watercolors.  And an artist's easel.

And now, for the fun part!   What's this you ask?  The landscape of a distant planet?

No, just the surface of the giant cookie Alyssa requested in place of a birthday cake...

And it must have been good...this plate is getting scraped clean!