When it rains it pours

Now I knew perfectly well that when I posted the last post about our beautiful weather that there was a series of storms headed our way and that the beautiful weather would be short lived, but would also return. So about a week or so ago we had the rainiest weather all week long. One storm after another hit us back to back. By Thursday the ground was saturated and the biggest of the storms was pounding down on us. This is what it looked like out the back door of the school I work at. I was standing up a step and was still inside peering around the corner to catch this picture. If I had taken a step down I would've soaked my shoes.
On this playground there are two drains fairly close to each other. Both were clogged with leaves and such, causing this wonderful flood. Vicki (one of the teachers) was preparing her lunch in the kitchen when she saw some students' jackets floating on the playground. She went outside and gathered up about 10 jackets that were clearly not hanging on the hooks that they were supposed to be hanging on. They were soaked. The kind of scary part is that the students all went outside to pick up their lunches and brought them in to eat. 15 minutes into eating the whole playground was flooded. Yes it rained a lot! Vicki was the only one who had rain boots, so she was nominated to go unclog the drains.
I stood in the kitchen laughing hysterically as the rain came pounding down. Then Vicki suggested that I take a picture. So this is kind of an after picture. Here the drains are trying hard to do their job as they're not clogged anymore. A couple minutes later the heavy rains stopped and sprinkled for a little bit. We all laughed! Vicki went out when the weather was the worst.

I don't remember the exact amount of rainfall we ended up getting, but on average we get about 8-10 or so inches a year. That week we received about 8-9 inches. Looks like we got our year's rainfall in a week....so the weather should be beautiful the rest of the year :)

Top 10 Reasons to live in Southern California

In lieu of a Christmas Card or newsletter or really anything of that sort since we didn't have pictures taken or anything this year. We decided to write about the fun things that we can do in December and January that you can't do as comfortably everywhere else. So are we rubbing it in about our beautiful weather? YES WE ABSOLUTELY ARE! Now one might ask why we would do such a horrible thing to all our friends that live elsewhere...hehehe (snicker snicker) and our answer is-because we can :) Aren't we wonderful?!

Now where did we get this ingenious plan? Peter was surfing the Internet one evening and pulled up a picture of the weather in the united states for that particular day. Sadly we didn't take a screen shot though we wish we had because the entire US was covered in blue and purple...meaning frigid temperatures. While a small part of the CA coast and of course where we live had the only green coloring on the entire map. We feel so blessed to live here. So here goes our top 10 reasons to live in Southern California:

Number 10: The weather is amazing! On New Year's Eve I took down the Christmas lights on my parents' house. Every year I put them on the roof and every year I take them down. This year I put my blow-up Pooh and Tigger onto the roof. It was really cool at night. My brother and I were talking about it and my dad said it wasn't possible it would lean too much. As soon as my dad left to run an errand, the ladder came out and I was soon on the roof with my brother handing me the equipment. It worked out well. My dad thought it was pretty cool when it was all up. So I put the lights up about a week or so before Christmas and I took them down on New Year's Eve. The weather both days was amazing!
Number 9- Sea World Fun

On New Year's Eve we went to Sea World. For the holidays the animals all got a special treat. The penguins here got a penguin snowman. We needed a special treat so we went and got our usual funnel cake. Normally we get strawberry, but this was a special caramel apple flavor, it was delicious!
Number 8: We have a beach close by...Why yes we can take long walks on the beach...even if we don't go that often...we still have one close by :)

Number 7: The Wild Animal Park
On New Year's Day we went to the Wild Animal Park. I hadn't been since Peter and I were dating. While dating we fed the lorakeets and had a blast. We relived the experience.
The meerkats enjoyed their holiday presents. So did the lions, gorillas and basically all of the other animals. It was really cute to watch them all play with their gifts.
Number 6: The weather
We can run to the grocery store without putting on heavy jackets or several layers. In fact on Tuesday I wore capris and sandals to work.

Number 5: LA Adventures:
Disneyland and Disney's CA Adventure are just a mere 2 hours away
The Getty Museums are amazing-we plan on visiting the Malibu one soon.

Number 4: The weather
Do your rose bushes look like this in January? I bet not.

Number 3: What doesn't grow well here?
Now we are totally jealous with our friends' gardens and the bounteous fruits and veggies they are able to produce...with that said there's always fresh fruits for sale at the local farmers markets and grocery stores. We bought strawberries today, yes they were grown in CA.

Number 2: No snow hereNot only are the animals out and about, but check out the mountains. We don't get snow at our elevation. That means no slippery roads, no sliding into other cars, no slipping and sliding while walking to the car. Gosh I love living here.

And the Number 1 reason to live in Southern California is tomorrow's forecast is 70 degrees and sunny. Can't beat that! How is the weather where you are?