"Epic" Wind Storm, Clothes Drive and Brandon and Victoria's Wedding

Throughout the week we had several newscasts of a potential historic storm coming in from the south pacific.  That sent a lot of people into panic mode.  They were comparing it to the storm of '62 which could be similar.  These massive storms are remnants of typhoons (in this case, Typhoon Songda) that weaken as it makes its way up to the cooler Pacific Northwest waters.  It broke up into three pieces.  We were to get the first one on Thursday night, one on Friday and the worse one was suppose to hit Saturday. 

The one on Thursday night was pretty mild.  We got a lot of rain.

The storm on Friday night brought a lot of rain, mild wind and some severe thunderstorms in certain areas.  The two places that were hit hard were Tillamook County, Oregon and Long Beach, Washington had reported waterspouts.  The one that hit the small town of Manzanita, Oregon started as a waterspout then went onto land as an EF2 tornado which destroyed at least 20-30 homes in town but luckily no injuries were reported.  It was weird seeing all of this bizarre weather unfold. 

Washington wasn't hit all that hard.  Some trees fell over, cars were damaged and some residents lost power but this "epic" storm really wasn't all that "epic."  It actually got weaker as it reached land on Saturday morning.

It looked worse than it really was.  This is a satellite view as it reached Western Washington.  The highest recorded wind gust was at the southern tip of Vancouver Island at 69 m.p.h.  It was officially named the Ides of October Storm.

Saturday morning really wasn't that bad.  I got up around 9:30, got dressed in my rain gear, ate breakfast and packed the bags of clothes into the Escape.  I hustled to the dentist office in Yelm for our relay for life clothes drive.  Of course mom would pick the worse day to do this on and I had to be at a wedding at 4.  Luckily the weather didn't really start getting windy until after 2 p.m. 

I stayed at the dentist office with her until about noon.  I ate my leftover pizza and we watched part of a college football game while we waited for people to drop stuff off.  We had about 5 people stop by.  I rushed out to grandma's house and picked up some stuff she had then raced home to help dad finish getting the suburban ready to go and packing up the bags and boxes of clothes and stuff.  I packed the Escape so full it looked like hard core Tetris was being played.  Then we put stuff into the suburban until it was crammed full.  Then we attached the trailer for the stuff that mom had at the office.

We were on our way back to the office to load the rest of the items people dumped off.  When we got there Dr. Blackner, his wife and kids were there unloading their stuff.  They helped us load the trailer.  We thanked them and we were now on our way to donate it to Value Village.  We got there just after 2.  The guy came out with the carts.  We unloaded the Escape and mom's car first and then the trailer and the stuff inside the suburban.  Once we looked at how much we really had we were like WOW!  That's a buttload of stuff!  We had over 1500 lbs of stuff!

I told mom I had to go get ready for a wedding.  I wasn't going to have that much time to get ready.  I really wanted a shower but we were at Value Village too long.  I made it home with basically a half hour to get ready.  I ended up wearing the same outfit I wore to Nick and Nickey's wedding about a month ago.  It worked so I was going to stick with it.  Ben couldn't come with me because he was at a training at the Littlerock station.  He might get done so he could go to the reception out in Roy.  Both the ceremony and the reception were suppose to be in Roy but because of the weather the ceremony was changed to the Violet Prairie grange outside of Tenino.  I hurried as fast as I could to make it before the 4 p.m. start time.  I got behind some slow people on Ol' Hwy 99 and the trees made me nervous since the wind started to pick up a bit more.  There was a lot of tree barf on the roads and some good sized limbs.

I got there with about 15 minutes to spare.  I talked to Monica for a bit and then went inside because it started raining.  The grange was tinier than I thought it would be.  I sat with Lacey and her new "friend" because I wasn't sure who all was coming or when they would arrive.  The ceremony started just after 4.  I watched the wedding party walk down the aisle and wondered who was in the wedding.  Our friend Rebecca, who I haven't seen in at least 4 years, was one of Brandon's groomsmen, the Best Woman, and she was wearing a pretty slick pant suit.  I saw Megan, Matt, their kids, Amber and her boyfriend Josh, Lindsay and Justin in the back corner.  It was nice to see Amber again and finally meet her boyfriend we hear about. 

The ceremony was quick and painless, some shots were taken, humor was prevalent in just a way to where it screamed Brandon.  I hadn't met Victoria yet until that day and she seemed to fit Brandon perfectly.  She was dressed in a really nice dress and Brandon looked like a college professor but in a good way. 

Afterwards, I went into the back gave Brandon and big hug and met Victoria for the first time.  She was so happy to meet me since we've been friends on Facebook for over a year.  I said hi to Rebecca quickly because they were doing photos.  I chatted with everyone and met Amber's boyfriend for a few minutes and then everyone cleaned up everything as quick as they could and we headed over to the reception in Roy.  I wasn't planning on attending the reception but I was talked into it.

I should have brought some extra clothes but I didn't.  I didn't realize people went home and changed into warmer clothes either.  Oh well.  I survived.  I have never been out to the Tacoma Polo Club before so I followed Nuvi's directions off of the address we were provided with.  The address did not match.  I followed some of the other people and ended up at someone's house.  He told us which way to go.  When I arrived the place was huge!  I have never been inside an outdoor horse arena.  Good thing I wore my hiking shoes!  The floor was dirt with some muddy spots since there were a few leaks in the roof.  I talked to a few people that played horse polo at WSU.  I can't believe we all remembered each other.  We reminisced about the parties we went to at Brandon's apartment.

My friend arrived shortly after and we found a table to sit at.  We ate some chips and dip and some fruit cups while we waited for the main course.  We chatted, caught up and visited most of the time.  The main course were make your own tacos, beer, cider and wine.  There was some dancing, cake eating and visiting next to burn barrels.  We took a few pictures and I caught up with Brandon and Victoria again before it was time to go home.  I was getting cold and the fires were starting to make the area smoky.

I headed home around 9:30, took a shower and jumped into bed.  It was so nice to be clean, warm and laying in bed.  Today was a long day and I was tired.  Congratulations to Victoria and Brandon!  May your lives together bring you fun and adventure! #alcottery

Next Adventure:  Mom's Seahawk Birthday