The great flood of 2011

Did it rain yesterday where you are?

We had a down pour and here is the sad sad tale.

I woke up, prepared the Sunday school lesson, prepared children for church and headed out.

Survived church, which is a feat in it's self because Good Looking is doing a job in Alaska. So I got to sit through sacrament meeting and teaching our seven year old boys by myself.

After church I did the unthinkable...I went to the Joann's. I am making Baubi's pageant dress and because she is so tiny, I could not just go to the store and buy one. (trust me I tried) Anyway I am making Baubi's pageant dress and ran out of thread. All I wanted to do yesterday was go get my thread and sew her dress and make taco salad for dinner. I really don't think I was asking too much, but I guess higher powers wanted to punish me for breaking the Sabbath and going shopping.

On the way home it started raining. I like summer rain. I think it is fun to survive a hot day, see the clouds build, and then feel like the day has been refreshed after the rain has stopped and the skies have cleared.

The rain kept building and building, I commented to Baubi "I think this is what they call a torrential down pour" (little did I know). We went a bit further, and that is when we experienced a true a torrential down pour. We couldn't see very far and the rain drops were about the size of quarters, then the hail started. It was so loud in the car we could barely hear ourselves. It slowed down the closer we got to our house.

As we turned into out neighborhood, I noticed that our good friends had friends over. The closer I got I noticed that their friend had a shop vac in hand. That is when it hit me, their house is getting flooded. Sure enough three window wells in their basement were filling up fast and they needed help. We pulled in the garage and I sent the girls over with our shop vac to see if they needed it. I could hear my back yard neighbors yelling at each other, the husband was on the roof trying to clear out the gutters and the wife was reporting on the state of their window well. 

All the while I was calm, we have had at least four floods in past and I really thought all the problems were solved and I had nothing to worry about....oh was I wrong.

I had just posted on my facebook that I was so glad that my husband had fixed the gutters so I didn't have to worry.Then I thought maybe I should double check that one. Sure enough I went downstairs and the carpet was wet. This is at least the fifth time the basement has flooded and Good Looking has only ever been here for two of them. I went running back to our friends house to get back our shop vac. I tried to move the couches out of the way and tried to get the water out. It did not take long for word to spread that I needed help. The men in the neighborhood were over in no time, trying to get out what they could, but it was so much worse than we thought.  

In the end I have no carpet pad in my family room. The play room/office has only about half of it's carpet pad left. Two sections of my couch are in the garage the corner section is in Baubi and Gowyn's room, along with the extra family room furniture. I have a bookcase in the laundry room and the entertainment center is in pieces off the carpet in the family room.

Here is the photographic evidence.

See that white line on the glass, that is how high the water got before it decided to see what my house was like. No the gutter pipe in the window well is not connected to anything, my husband likes to store stuff like that under our deck.

See that dark line in the carpet pad. that is how far the water got. Just so you know that wall is usually covered up by the entertainment center.

My father in law came over with a fan to try to blow it dry, it is not working the carpet is still soaking wet.

This is the whole room view. To the right sits a very large, very heavy sectional couch with a hide away bed and two recliners. To the left sits our entertainment center, it is big and has three sections. There is also a small bookcase next to the entertainment center.

This is the opposite view, this is the office/playroom the desk is usually looking at you, and a book case is in the spot where the desk is.

Now that book case is in the laundry room, blocking it.

Here is the inside of the laundry room, yep no laundry is getting done today. 

This is Baubi and Gowyn's room, all of that furniture is not suppose to be there. 

I really wish I could say that this part of their room looks like this because our basement flooded and we had to get things off the floor, and their room got it all. Nope it always looks like this.

This is our garage today, the kids love it. They think it is great to have such a cosy place to relax during the day. That white piece of furniture was a vanity of my great grandmother's it was in the office waiting to be refinished. It got so wet that the drawers are swollen shut. I hope that the heat of the garage can fix that problem.

This is the pony wall in the entry way, it suffered some damage trying to get the couches out.

This is what we figured happened. My husband buried the gutter pipe under the ground, with a pop up so that we wouldn't have to worry about it getting knocked off and flooding again. The unforeseen problem with this fix is where does the debris go. I will tell you... it gets stuck in the pop up and then the water doesn't have anywhere else to go but up and over the gutter, then onto the deck, and then through the cracks in the deck, and then finally into the window well and onto the floor.

I am sure it could have been worse, no one was hurt, there was no structural damage. The thing that is bothering me today, is that the carpet is still soaking wet, my house is in great disarray, I am suppose to be sewing a pageant dress, but my sewing room is also full of stuff and it is getting stinky down there, there are no screens on the basement windows so I can not open them up and let the stink out. The number one thing that is bother me, is the number one thing that I can not change, my husband is not here. He is not here to get the screens on the windows (I don't even know where they are, and if they are even OK to go on the windows) This whole fan business is just the thing that he would do, so I wouldn't have to. He would have everything organised and not crazy piled all over the house.

I am sure there are some of you saying "do it yourself woman" but here is the thing...... I don't want to. I want to be sewing a pageant dress, and finishing my quilt. I do not want to worry about calling the neighbor to find out who had the extruder, so that I can get the water out of the carpet. I don't want to worry about where we are going to put all the stuff until the carpet is dry and new pad is laid down. I do not want to worry about the proper placement of the fan to get the best air flow. I only want to worry about what to make for dinner, and how I am going to thank everyone who helped me out yesterday. 

I began this long tale of woe by saying that I like the summer rain, and here is the fun part of the rain from yesterday. Our sad little dessert town now has a lake or a pond. 

This is our local park it is also the retaining pond for situations just like yesterday. It was fun to see everyone gather to see how full it is (It's ten feet deep in case you were wondering) My friend even had her boys out there on the kayak, because what else are you suppose to do with that much water?

OK I am going to look for the silver lining, and never go to Joann's on a Sunday again.