FLOOD 2007!

Top: County Road 275

Bottom: Highway 89

FLOOD 2007!

Highway 89: Lake Abilene is about 100 ft. to the left
We're on Buffalo Gap Rd right here going over a creek, or should I say through it, just getting into Buffalo Gap
County Road 279 or 280, not sure which. (we didn't see a sign) It is on the west side of the lake


County Road 275

Hey hey kids, it's a flood out there, ya better head for high ground!

Me and Sarah did the opposite yesterday, we went looking for where it was flooding. We drove out to Buffalo Gap and got in to Buffalo Gap but were unable to leave B. Gap via the same road. We were going to try to go down to the State Park but that road was closed so we went further down the road toward Lake Abilene and kept getting cut off due to the flooding. We finally got out of there by going down C.R. 150 leading to Highway 83/84, thanks to a highway patrolman's directions.

It's flooding in a lot of places around Elm Creek but don't worry about us, it's as dry as a bone here.

Sorry I'm not sure where all of this is. We went unprepared by not having a map or gps with us so we were just kind of judging where we were by reading the available street signs.

What's been happnin'...(cont.)

by the way, I had a 2nd surgery to remove a few screws from my ankle because that's what caused the infection supposedly. So you see the screws on the bottom of my x-ray? Those aren't there anymore, so now I just have this big dent in my ankle that keeps scabbing over. Lovely eh?

This is the day I almost threw up, especially when she started peeling the skin off and all this blood started spewing everywhere and my leg started convulsing uncontrollably and I kicked my nurse in the nose and she started bleeding and, and, just kidding that didn't really happen, but it was kind of nasty when she started peeling off the skin where the giant blood blister had been.

Little life lessons I've learned from this experience:

1. wives are very handy, you should get you one if you don't have one, mom's are pretty helpful too, not that I'm comparing my wife to my mom, ok this is getting weird.

2. wear dirtbike boots when riding a dirtbike

3. get health insurance, even when you think you don't need it

4. get plenty of fiber in your diet, being constipated is NOT fun

5. pain medicine is great!

-Zach

What's been happnin'...(cont.)

WARNING: one picture may not be suitable for children, or those with weak stomaches. I almost threw up the firt time I saw it, trust me it looked a lot worse in person, 'cause there was this huge blood blister on the left side of my leg.

Don't Read this one first, read the one below this one first.

Here are a couple of pictures from that fateful day that changed my life FOOOREEEEVERRRRR!!!

Anyways to make a long story short, I was in A LOT of pain for the first few weeks and I

couldn't move around much and I had to keep my leg propped up on a billion pillows constantly.

I got to play a lot of video games and watch a lot of movies though.

Now that I'm out of the splint and off the crutches, my life has gotten a lot better. I had to go to the Dr.'s office about every two weeks at first, but then it slowed down to once a month and now I'm finally done seeing the Dr.'s!!! Isn't that exciting?! I don't have a bone infection anymore and I can work about 15 hrs. a week now!

Oh, by the way, I graduated from college too during all of this. I had to take two classes, sweet. One was online and the other was photography, piece of cake! I had my first 4.0 semester ever!

I applied for a substitute teaching job here in A.I.S.D. and I have my orientation tomorrow at 8:45. I'm hoping they won't need me too bad once school starts because, due to recent beliefs or rumors, yes my leg still hurts. Yes, even though there is no infection, it still gives me trouble, especially my ankle if it gets in certain position.

I apologize for this sporadic writing, I'm trying to remember things that happened almost 8 months ago, gimme a break, no pun intended, yet....nevermind.

-Zach

What's been happenin'...

Just thought I'd let you know what's been going on in our lives (in case you've been on a different planet or country). December 24th I broke my left leg and shattered my ankle on the same leg. I had surgery Christmas day around noon. As you can see, they put a plate and a bunch of screws in my leg (18?). The plate was to hold the bone in place and the screws on the bottom were to fill in the holes in my ankle, ya know since it SHATTERED! I was thinkin', "I'll be walking again in 6 weeks and everything will back to normal." WRONG! I was on crutches until the middle of June, got down to one crutch the last couple of weeks. After a couple of months when my doctor realized it wasn't healing properly, he decided to send me to an infectious disease doctor who told me I had a bone infection. Great.

This infect. dis. dr. told me that I had to take doxocyclin twice a day for 6 months, or get an antibiotic drip for 6 weeks, which is super expensive. Oh by the way, we didn't have ANY health insurance and didn't have a way of paying for any of this except through monthly payments which are eating us alive now, but it's getting better now that I'm able to work a little and Sarah has a full time job, but I'll get back to that in a minute.

So we're trying to find a way to pay for this antibiotic drip but never get enough funds for it but are very thankful to those who did try to help. Wow this is all over the place.

The Dr. never put a cast on my leg, just a splint and I had to get that changed twice a month for a couple of months. I had these wounds on my leg that Sarah had to dress twice a day then later once a day. I also had to soak my foot in bleach for a couple of weeks everynight to get all of the dead skin off.

Oh, I couldn't get my leg wet so Sarah had to put it in a plastic bag and get me a chair to sit in everytime I took a bath over at mom's house.

(I'll have to continue this later, my awesome wife is home from her "dangerous" library job and I'm going to eat lunch with her, so there)

For more pictures...

We have a few more pictures posted on photobucket.com if you want to see those.
Just go to www.photobucket.com and type in griffotography in their search engine

Family shots

Here are some more family pics. Hope you like them.

-Zach

F.Y.I.

Just to let you know, Zach is posting to this site now too...isn't he handsome?

-Zach

2nd Anniversary

We just celebrated our 2nd anniversary on Sunday the 12th, but the anni.'s actually the 13th. Here are the flowers I bought for Sarah. The florist at H-E-B said the roses are called Intuition Roses and the others are Lillies but I'm not sure what kind.

Christmas Dogs

...and here are our festive dogs.

Family Photos

Here is our family in a rare snowy occassion in Texas.