I am so NOT dreaming of a white Christmas......

Hi blogging friends

I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas and that Santa brought you some fantastic presents.  The start of Christmas Day was lovely and we spent it with family and went home late afternoon, but we ended up having a "White Christmas" because we had a series of terrible storms that afternoon with very large hail, flooding and much damage to properties and cars in our area.  I couldn't believe how quickly our area became flooded and I have never seen anything like this in my life.

We got off lightly compared to other people and we have family who have lost their cars and suffered significant property damage.   Sure we have holes in the laserlight roofing over our decking, plants shredded, the garage had some flooding and we had minor flooding in our kitchen - but honestly, that's nothing compared to other people.  It was scary being in the house watching the storm, seeing and hearing the hail pound the house and wondering what was going to happen next.

It was hard to believe that an hour before that, we were sitting around with these same family members enjoying Christmas festivities.   The rain and hail was just relentless - and unfortunately, we had storm after storm which just added to our woes.  Just when you thought it was all over, another storm hit.  At 10:30pm that night when we heard yet another beginning of rumbling of thunder, my DH opened the front door and yelled at the sky "Enough already.....!" which I think echoed everyone's thoughts.  We just wanted it to stop!

We spent much of the late afternoon and early evening checking on our immediate neighbours - they all seemed to suffer the same sort of damage as us with broken skylights and smashed laserlight roofing from the large hail and hail damage to cars (fortunately our cars were in the garage and are OK).  Here is a photo of the size of the hail - the garden looked like it had snowed:

Hail in our trailer

Today the weather has been beautiful - sunny and a clear blue sky and the floodwaters have receded.  The naturestrips are piled high with carpets and other flood-damaged items.  We cleared out our garage of all the water damaged items and washed the muddy concrete floor - it was rather smelly - but at least nothing of any value was damaged unlike so many residents, businesses, schools and kindergartens who have lost so much more and have the hassle of dealing with insurance companies that are closed for the holiday season which leaves them in limbo. 

I am so NOT dreaming of a white Christmas......

Thanks for visiting my blog.  I'll be back soon with my final Christmas card sharing of the year.

Jocelyn