Our Beautiful City, Underwater

So Friday June 21st, our city, and those surrounding us, experienced a natural disaster.  The Elbow and Bow rivers flowed over their banks and into our city.

I dropped my son off at daycare on Friday morning and drove the short distance to work.   I took the route I normally do and had to drive through 6 inches of water at one point and was horrified to see the river coming up and spilling onto the road.  They closed that particular stretch of road within 20 minutes of me passing through.  I got to work and heard about the road closures and immediately left again.  Mama bear instinct kicked in and I became panicky until I could get DS from daycare.  His daycare was in an area unlikely to flood, but the roads to get to his daycare were all being shut down, one by one.  Here are some of my photos I was able to snap:

You can see some of the houses covered in water

That's DH wading through a "pathway" that we normally jog.  The above picture was from Friday, and we were back down checking it out on Sunday and there is no longer water blocking that pathway

The following is where I normally jog and that is a bridge I have run over hundreds of times. 

It's so absolutely crazy to watch your city destroyed by water.  It's been surreal.  We are lucky that the waters seem to be receding, and we are gearing up to put in as many volunteer hours as needed to get the city cleaned up.  

I'm back to work today but will be going home and gathering up what I can to donate to flood relief.  If you want to make a donation, you can donate to the Red cross

New Family Member!

We are pleased to announce that our family has grown by 4 paws!

Meet Jake the Dog:

His Mom is a pure bred golden retriever and his Dad is a maremma x husky.  We think he's going to be a pretty big boy!

Here's a shot of Jake the Dog and Owen the Human:

And for those who don't get it, we named him after "Jake the Dog" from Adventure time:

Growing a Garden

We had a busy busy busy Father's Day this year!  Hubby never wants to do anything that I consider conventional, like attend an amusement park or take Owen to the zoo or something like that.  He doesn't want to go fishing, or drinking beer with his buddies, nope, he wants to be outside and working on our home.

So for Father's Day 2013, DH built me a raised garden!  I've been trying to try for years to grow a garden full of veggies that we could eat, even if we only got a carrot or two.  Most of the time I get started and then forget all about my garden and it gets neglected and dies out without ever producing a single edible plant.  C'est la vie.  This year will be different because now I have a raised planter to keep out the animals and (hopefully) ants

Before:

And After I painted it with some left over stain and paint I had kicking around:

Notice the little rocks that we painted and labelled so we know what's where and what's what!!

Now, to keep them watered and my fingers crossed that we can get something edible this year.