Category Archives: News

Muddy Saturday Walk ~ Storm Watch So. Cal.

Here’s what our weather was like yesterday and what it’s suppose to look like today. Our muddy walk was on Saturday when we had weather very similar to Sunday.

This
Afternoon
Chance Showers. Chance for Measurable Precipitation 50%
Chance
Showers
Hi 58°FFalling Temperatures		 Tonight

Showers. Chance for Measurable Precipitation 100%
ShowersLo 44°F		 Monday

Chance Showers. Chance for Measurable Precipitation 30%
Chance
Showers
Hi 59°F		 Monday
Night
Partly Cloudy
Partly
Cloudy
Lo 39°F

We picked the rainiest weekend of the year to check out this huge empty area behind our condominium complex that’s going to look like…

this in a little less than a year!

I’m hoping to get to see some fun soccer just steps away from my back door. Besides all these soccer pitches they are also putting in 3 baseball diamonds on the far end.

Here are more photos from our muddy Saturday walk.

 

This was funny, no road here but there’s a stop sign and a street sign, hmmm?

I’m hoping they find a way to save this tree.

So is this what your dog’s paws looked like yesterday Kim?

Sad Day in My Family

Today we got word that our cousin Vera Bogdanoff had died of complications from an aneurysm she had a few months ago. She was progressing well but had complications from an infection two days ago. Alex is my father’s nephew, my cousin. They were Molokan like my dad but left the Molokan church years ago to follow Christ more earnestly as did my parents. Vera was one of my relatives on my dad’s side that I could relate to and enjoy whenever I was around her. She will be missed dearly. They moved recently to Texas just before she had her aneurysm to be close to one of their daughters. My parents were just in Texas over Thanksgiving visiting my brother and his wife and they all were able to go to the convalescent home and visit her. They sang songs in Russian to her and she cried and mouthed some of the words with them. It was a sweet time.

This is a photo from 52 years ago on their wedding day. They were married in the Molokan church. It is the Molokan tradition that the groom and his extended family gather on the day of the wedding for a blessing and then go to the brides family home to pick her up (this is where the bride leaves her mother and father and clings to her husband) and go to the church for the wedding. There is always a married couple chosen to be the bride and grooms chaperons/escorts (best man and maid of honor type deal) My cousin Alex is in the middle of this photo flanked by my Uncle Bill and Aunt Nora who were his chaperons. I’m the littlest one on the front row with the coat on surrounded by my siblings and cousins. My dad and mom are next to my Aunt Nora in the back. Molokans still dress like this for church, weddings, and funerals.

My parents will be flying to the Dallas area for the funeral. We know that Vera is with her Savior and rejoicing. We are praying for her 2 daughters and son-in-laws, grandchildren and her husband, my cousin Alex who will miss her dearly.

Washington Floods!

Oh my, oh my. I’ve been working all day with water problems. We do not have it as bad as our friends the Terreson’s. Here’s a picture of the water on their street today coming into their basement! We were there with you in 1996 filling sand bags and putting them at your garage doors. We’re hoping for the best for you dear Terreson’s!

I’ve been working on our basement too. After shop-vacuuming up over 16 gallons of water I decided to just pull up the carpeting and padding because there was no way I’d be able to dry that carpet and padding without the tell tale mildew smell lingering forever. Dan came home early from work to help me and Katie helped when she came home from school. I will not be driving anywhere for the next day or two as so many roads are flooded and closed. Dear is feeling bad being in California where it’s sunny and warm and not being here to help us…

The last time we had flooding this bad we were declared a disaster area. We lost our home because the damage from the flooding. A landslide behind our home compromised our foundation and the fix was going to be so costly that we’d never be able to afford it. (100’s of thousands of dollars) We gave our dream home back to the bank! We do not live on a slope this time around and we are happy about that. We will probably replace our carpeting in the basement with ceramic tile.

This is the slope in the back of the home we gave back to the bank in 1996!

Keep us in your prayers bloggy friends. Counting it all joy….

 

New Presentation Up till December 26th!

 UPDATE: I encountered technical difficulites with the new header so I had to call Lana G! and she did this for me…Thanks Lana!!

Hello y’all I decided to change my presentation for the month of December. I’ll be going back to my other presentation on December 26th! I love Christmas time…

“Bless, O God, the little things

This Christmastide…

All the little wild things

That live outside.

Little cold Robins and Rabbits in the snow…

Give them good faring, A warm place to go.

Bless the little things who in

The forest abide

He, too, was just a little one

At Chirstmastide.

ht: Christmas Issue, Ideals, 1964

108 Car Pile-up on Highway 99 near Fresno, California

Our road trip to the Fresno area got complicated…

Dear and I left home on Saturday before dawn. We stopped for breakfast in Santa Clarita (hi Ryan, Michelle, and Jack!)

We continued north through the Grapevine after breakfast to get to Highway 99 in Central California. This is pretty much what Highway 99 looks like through Central California.  I took this photo at the city of Goshen.

22 miles North of Goshen on Highway 99 in Central California is where this horrible crash occurred. Thankfully we were a couple hours behind it. We came upon signs on the Highway that said it was closed. We pulled to the right and ended up making a u-turn to get off the freeway using an on-ramp at Manning…that was weird. We called Jim and Jeanie and got alternate directions to their house. None of us found out until late in the afternoon what a horrific pile up had occurred.

“Two people are dead after a massive 108-car pileup on Highway 99, just south of Fresno. The crash happened between American and Clovis Avenues. At least 39 others were injured. The crash flooded local hospitals with victims.”

They believe the accident was caused by low visibility because of fog. Thick seasonal fog known as “Tule fog” typically occurs in Central California in the late fall and winter. To read about Tule fog click here.

Clovis Avenue is the street we ended up taking to get to my cousins house.

Praying that God comforts those who lost their loved ones and that the ones who are injured will heal quickly and for everyone involved that they would be comforted and turn their eyes to our creator…

The northbound highway was still shut down when we headed back home to Southern California.

Hunter’s Moon Tonight ~

Tonight’s Full Moon is the Hunter’s Moon!

I hope to get a photo later tonight to add to this post tomorrow! This photo is the Hunter’s Moon at 6:35 P.M. Pacific Time. I’m wondering if the orange glow to it is because of the smoke here in Southern California. I’m still hoping to get a better shot later…

Tonight’s full moon is the Hunter’s Moon. It’s also the closest and therefore biggest full moon of 2007.

Tonight’s moon will be about 50,000 kilometers – or 30,000 miles – closer to the Earth than 2007’s most distant and smallest full moon, last April.

This October full moon is the Hunter’s Moon for the northern hemisphere. That’s the name for the full moon following the Harvest Moon in September. This October full Hunter’s Moon comes at precisely 4:52 a.m. Universal Time Friday. For the continental U.S., that means the full moon comes this evening or around midnight Thursday night, when the moon will be shining sky high.

At the same time – on the opposite side of the world in East Asia and Indonesia – this same full moon will be reaching its peak at noontime Friday.

No matter where you live, all of you will see a large and full-looking moon all night tonight. You’ll see the moon rising in the east around sunset, highest in the sky around local midnight and setting in the west around sunrise.

http://www.earthsky.org/radioshows/51820/hunters-moon-closest-full-moon-for-2007

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes ~ California Fires Continue

We happen to live by the coast where all the smoke clouds from the Saugus, Magic, Castaic, Santa Clarita, Wood Ranch, and Moorpark fires are being blown to because of the Santa Ana Wind conditions. The clouds in the photos above are smoke clouds not storm clouds. The smell of smoke is heavy in the air and the ash is all over everything. We do not have any fires in our immediate neighborhoods we are only getting the side effects of the poor air quality because of the smoke. It seems that there has been some improvement as of Wednesday. There are still many fires that are not under control and many homes are threatened. We hope that when the winds die down all the fires will be under control. We’re continuing to pray and to be sorrowful for all the hundreds of thousands of people who had to be evacuated and the thousands who have lost everything…

California Fires!

Somewhat Wordless…

Pray for the Firefighters! Pray for comfort for those who have lost their homes in Southern California! The winds are suppose to die down by this afternoon, pray that they do.

2 Corinthians 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

For more WW click here.

Safe and Sound In Southern California!

Katie and I arrived safe and sound today. The trip was easier than we expected. Thank you to those of you who were praying that my feet and legs wouldn’t cramp. God answered your prayers! Not one cramp in the 20 hours of driving. Of all the books on cd that we took our #1 favorite was Jeeves and the Song of Songs by P. G. Wodehouse. Funny and very entertaining. We enjoyed one of the Barchester Chronicles and Book 5 of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Today we listened to Meet Me at the Morgue which was an entertaining murder mystery. We wouldn’t recommend The Vicar of Wakefield, for us it was horribly dull!

Katie took this at the border of Oregon and California.

Katie being creative…

There is a story to this mountain range. Yes, what you see is a mountain range. The smallest mountain range in the World! Dear’s Mother Verna is buried in a cemetery with these mountains in the background. Our photo is from I-5 which is the opposite view from the one below.

Yuba City’s Sutter Buttes

Yuba City’s western horizon is dominated by the Sutter Buttes, renowned for being the “Smallest Mountain Range in the World.”

The range is actually circular with a diameter of 10 miles and covers an area of about 75 square miles. The mountains are the remnants of a volcano that has been dormant for over a million years. South Butte, the highest peak is 2,117 feet above sea level. North Butte is 1,863 feet and West Butte is 1,685 feet above sea level.

Before modern levees and dams were built to contain the rivers, winter storms and spring run-off frequently turned the Sacramento Valley into an inland sea making the Sutter Buttes an island refuge for Indians, settlers and wildlife.

The Buttes have had many names over the years. The Maidu Indians called them “Histum Yani” which translates as, “Middle Mountains of the Valley” or “Spirit Mountain” … depending on the source. According to Maidu legend, after death, the spirits of their people rest in the Buttes.

Gabriel Moraga, a Spaniard trying to locate possible mission sites, was the first European to see the Sutter Buttes in 1806. Another Spaniard, Luis Arguello, led an expedition in 1817 to explore Northern California by water. He called the Buttes “Los Picachos” or the peaks. He also named the Feather River “El Rio de la Plumas”, because he saw many feathers of wild fowl floating on the water.

Other names for the Buttes were “Marysville Buttes”, “Sacramento Buttes”, and “Los Tres Picos.” They were finally named the “Sutter Buttes” in 1949.

Today, most of the Sutter Buttes is private land and not open to the public. However, you can drive through and around the Buttes. It is a beautiful drive any time of the year! Each year, in the spring, over 1,000 cyclists converge to “Bike Around the Buttes” an event sponsored by the Diabetes Society of Yuba Sutter.

If you want to experience the Buttes up close, organized group tour hikes are available. You can also play golf in the Buttes at South Ridge Golf Course, but watch out for the infamous 16th hole!

http://www.syix.com/yubacity/sutterbuttes.html

 

Come to Seattle ~ A Little Tour

Dear arrived last night to Seattle for two whole weeks of vacation so we have a lot of relational, family, friend, and fellowship time in store for us. My and Lana G.‘s brother Leonard and his wife Mandy arrive Sunday night to visit us all for the week. My brother Leonard is Lana’s twin and my baby brother. He’s younger than Lana by 7 minutes and me by 12 years.

If my blogging is sporadic next week you’ll know why. We are off seeing the sights, eating out, and laughing our heads off. With your head off it’s hard to post anything of importance. I wanted to show you some fun sights that we might visit. I’m sure later I’ll have some actual shots of what we did. Blessings on your week with the 4th stuck right in the middle! Oh and to my Canadian friends Happy Canada Day tomorrow!

These are the beautiful grounds of Chateau Ste Michelle, a winery very close to our home.

They offer wine tours on the hour and are a great tourist destination. There is another winery across the road called Columbia. Then next door to the Columbia Winery is the Redhook Brewery that offers tours and has a restaurant and outdoor movies in the summer. Next door to the Redhook brewery is the renowned Herbfarm Restaurant and the Willows Lodge. The restaurant serves a several course meal (different each night) paired with wines and you will probably dish out $400 per couple for the evening. Dear and I won’t be going there in this lifetime. Redhook’s a lot cheaper with sandwiches and salads, etc. 🙂

Meanwhile, back at the Chateau, you’ll see ponds and flowers and peacocks.

This is the doorway to the main entrance. If you don’t drink wine but are interested in the tour they also offer grape juice at the end of the tour of the winery.

 

But now let’s go to the fun neighborhood of Fremont. Close to downtown Seattle and just across the Fremont bridge from Seattle Pacific University.

This is our famous troll that lives under the Aurora bridge. It’s huge. That’s an actual VW bug that it has it’s hand over. These are 3 of my nephews posing…

Why on earth does Fremont have the largest statue in the U.S. of the worst Russian leader of all time?!

This is  Kerry Park where you can see this famous view of Seattle and Elliot Bay. This was taken in the Fall. If we’d step to the left about 4 feet you could see more of downtown!

This is the Edmond’s Ferry Dock (I stole this photo from my son’s blog). We have several ferry routes around the area that  you can take to the Olympic Peninsula or many of the Washington Islands. Being surrounded by water, islands, and mountains makes Seattle unique and a great adventure. So make sure you put Seattle on your list of destinations to visit before you die. Come in July or August if you want more sunshine!