The Flood

We had quite the adventure last month when our basement flooded because of a broken sprinkler pipe. About 2:00 in the afternoon Libby came upstairs and said, “Mom, there’s something you should see in the basement.”  She was not overly concerned and so I was not overly concerned.  I was busy working on something and I am what my husband calls “Stair Lazy” so I just said “Can you just tell me what it is, please?” She couldn’t describe it and so Levi went down to check it out.  He came running back upstairs yelling, “There’s water coming into the basement!!!”  Well that got my stair lazy self down to the basement real quick.  Sure enough, our window well was filling up with water and gushing through the window.  The same window sill where our TV, DVD player and Wii sit.  The same window that sits above all my thousands of picture books. I ran out to Rock’s office (this was one of those times when I am very very grateful he works from home) to get his help and then ran back downstairs yelling orders to the kids.  “Bring towels!” When they brought me one towel: “ALL the towels, not just ONE!” I ripped the tv and all the other electrical equipment off the windowsill and stuffed towels in to stop the water.

After finding Lake Hymas in our back yard, Rock turned off the water, jumped in the window well and started bailing water with the “help” of the boys. Honestly the most work during this whole process was getting the kids to move quickly.  They were too awestruck by the water gushing everywhere. Luckily the water in the window well receded pretty quickly and we only had water about a foot into the basement carpeting.  Our neighbor has had this happen four times! and each time it has gotten the entire room wet. We were very lucky.   We pulled the carpet back and blew fans on it for a week.  Even though our DVD player and wii were practically swimming on the window sill, they were miraculously not damaged.  The only real damage was to my beloved books.

Two days later I went downstairs to check on the carpet and found a puddle in front of my basement fridge.  The old beast had finally bit the dust.  This time instead of running towels down the stairs we were running food up the stairs.  I was not too sad about this one because it meant I could finally replace the main fridge in the kitchen with one I actually want!

Two days after that, I found a puddle of water next to our master bedroom toilet.  Call the Plumber!

So all in about a week’s time we had to have the sprinkler guys, the appliance repairman AND the plumber out to our house.  I’m sure the neighbors thought we were remodeling.  Sigh.  Nope.
Bad things come in three’s, right?



The 4th of July