The Great Flood

So, last weekend it rained. And rained. And rained. We had the leftovers of two hurricanes back to back. The morning after the first night of major rain, Asher comes running into our bedroom saying, "The basement has a flood!" We got up to check, but thought it more likely that he just got confused. To support this theory, I opened the basement door, looked down briefly, and thought everything seemed fine. However, as I was shutting the door I realized that something didn't look quite right. I looked again and it took me a few seconds to figure out what was wrong - the rugs and toys were floating!

While things could have been a lot worse (like the power could have gone out), we did get about three inches in the basement. Fortunately, that is the maximum our basement can hold without causing major damage to water heaters, furnaces, etc. Everything is more or less back to normal now with only a minimal amount of loss (mostly toys). As Chris pointed out to me, at least with flooding our basement gets a very thorough cleaning at least once a year. That may all change soon (fingers crossed) though as this latest has convinced us to get a landscape architect to come out and help us fix our grading/landscaping issues.

One of the really fun side effects of the storms was the Great Stake Conference Adventure. Our stake center is about 50-60 minutes away. However, we have learned by experimentation that when the only interstate heading that way closes down due to flooding, it takes about 3 hours for the return trip. All of this boils down to a hungry crying baby, potty emergencies, and many "When are we going to be there?" inquiries. My idea of fun!!

This is water being pumped out full blast for about 2.5 days straight.

No, this is not a puddle. It is a river flowing to the street from one of our six sump pumps!