Merry Christmas, happy holidays and all that jazz... Finally, the season of holiday spending is coming to a quick close! whew!

sure has been beautiful around here lately!

The kitties are sure enjoying their first holiday season!
Hanging the stockings by the fireplace is out, Natasha seems to think it is fun to take them down, and since we use the fireplace insert for heat, we were worried about the fire hazard.
They got a new litter box. We gave up on the toilet training. Louis was doing fine, but little Natasha would not hear of it... We thought about getting an automatic litterbox, and after alot of research about price and breakability we decided on the large Omega Paw litter box.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002DK2DU
To scoop the litter, we roll the box. It works great! no more personal scooping!

course, we are not sure what they prefer more, the litter box, or the cardboard box it came in!

Got home today to find this Buck rubbing his horns on the willows. Frost never did go away today.

Kitties like it when we bring in wood. They take care of any/ all bugs that come with it.

Been busy at Joe's lately, we had a water issue. There are 2 sump pumps, one flows the water from one side of the crawlspace to the other side, and the 2nd pump is in the backyard near the house (where the water from the other pump is) it sends the water out to a drain field the previous owners put in.

We had 2 problems. The 1st sump pump under the house quit working. The 2nd pump the drain field is clogged, and it will not take any more water.
This pic is the 2nd pump. That is a 32gal garbage can in the ground. At the bottom of the can is a bucket that the sump pump is in.


We put 25ft of pipe above ground to pump the water out with the 2nd pump.
This is 48 hours of the sump pump running constantly.


Fortunately after 48hrs of pumping, the water line in the crawl space was low enough to have some dry spots. Here is a shot of the water line. I forgot to take a pic when the water was high, but the water was about an inch above the concrete... just enough for the post to soak in it. The insulation on the heat ducts used to not sag like that.

This is the 1st pump. Taken after draining the area a bit. You can see the water line on the concrete. I put in a new pump. (I have not yet checked to see if it is just the switch that went bad)


When we lived there, we rented a backhoe and put in a french drain, so I am going to pipe the 2nd pump over to our drain field for the roof drainage and a french drain for the driveway. I was going to work on it this morning, but the ground was frozen, so I decided to wait. I have the above ground pipe for now. The 2nd pump was running when I was there. no hurry at this point.

Saw this Eagle out in our front yard.

Thought I would venture out to check the yards drainage.
This shot is looking towards where the water comes from. It dries up in the summer. The bush in the center of the photo is the edge of Sammy's creek. The house in the background is where the seasonal creek starts.

It is a bit deeper than this morning. The rain is steadily coming down. We have had 2.5 inches since I went to bed last night. We get alot of drizzle, not rain like this...
This is looking towards where the water drains. It goes over 2-3 properties to a pond/ bog.

Took this shot from Suzi's blueberry bushes.

Water water everywhere... I was worried when I saw how much water was on the high side of our driveway. At first I thought the culvert under the driveway was clogged, but when I looked, it is pumping out pretty good on the other side.

Saw on the news this supposed to be a record day for percipitation in a day here. Lots of urban flooding, and mud slides around the puget sound today. At least they downgraded the wind storm that is on it's way.

Ginger got wiped out playing in the snow today.
Sam has to agree with Ginger.

Must be the hard work they put in on their snowman!

The snow melted yesterday, now we woke up to 4 inches of the white stuff, and it is still snowing. It won't be here long though, the pinapple express is on the way, so it will change to rain, and is supposed to break 50F Monday. toasty! There is a flood watch in place.

Woke up to some white stuff this morning... First of the year.