Flood of 2011

Did ya'll know that it rained in our town last Thursday? It did! And as much as I would love to be blogging about my sweet babies, I'm blogging about the flood. Unfortunately, the rain didn't benefit anybody. Well, I guess it did add moisture to the air. Which we were desperately trying to add with humidifiers. But now...we are waiting for some dehumidifiers to be delivered. Thursday, around 1:00 pm, I was in the living room, playing with Owen, when I heard water running. We have had frozen cold water pipes since Tuesday, so I figured they had finally defrosted and started running. We had been leaving the faucets open waiting for them. I walked into the hallway and saw water everywhere. Like 2 inches of standing water. I looked in the bathroom thinking I must have left the tub on, hahaha. Our bathroom mats were floating islands. And our toilet paper didn't stand a chance! I realized I was hearing the water further down the hall. I sloshed my way to our bedroom and saw the rain falling. Our ceiling fan was like a waterfall. I was able to get the water and electricity turned off, and Neil headed home as some friends of ours and I got the room empty. Four days later, and our bedroom carpet is still soaked, even without the padding underneath, and the ceiling is still dripping. Carpet Tech came out to clean it up, but they didn't do a good job, so our insurance adjuster is sending someone else out tomorrow to actually get us cleaned up and dried out. They will remove the wet insulation from the attic and leave us with fans and dehumidifiers. So, we will be contacting some contractors to get estimates on the damage, and hopefully, we will get this all taken care of very soon! We have moved in with Owen. Poor guy, finally get his "boy" room, (another blog) and we come crashing in. Neil said the other day, "Son, thanks for letting us move in. I promise it won't be for too long." I laughed and said, "Remember this when he is 21 and wants to move back in with us!" So, we are displaced, with our stuff everywhere, but where it's suppose to be. Our closets are full of stinky clothes, and Neil's shoes are wet. But in all of this, we are extremely thankful! We are trying to praise God even in this. We are feeling very blessed because with everything that got damaged, NOTHING got destroyed that could not be replaced. I had a shoe box full of Emma's baby pictures, from when she was born, to around 1 1/2 years old, one foot away from the waterfall, and not one single picture got wet. If you've read my blog before, you know how precious my pictures are, so with that I thank God daily! We were watching the news that night, and on there, some renters had the same thing happen. But for them, they lost everything. Everything was a total lost. They had no insurance and were going to have to start all over. I just wanted to cry. That's when I realized how blessed we had been. What was lost, fixtures, carpet, mattresses, walls, ceilings, all completely replaceable. Nothing but 2 books and some magazines were sent to the trash! I was just amazed! I was having some problems with the "what-ifs." What if Owen had been in his cradle, which was right under one of the leaks. (Don't worry Teresa, I saved it first and dried it off!) What if those pictures had been ruined. And so on, but Neil prayed that night, and actually thanked God for the pipes bursting. I started laughing, which I had been doing to keep from crying all day. And he said "I'm trying to be thankful for everything." I was so proud of him. Because it says in the Bible to praise Him for everything. So God, even though I'm not having much fun with this...thank you for our pipes bursting! It has shown me in so many ways that I am so blessed! I have everything I could ever want or need in my family. And our things, well they are not important. They are just icing.

Right beside the bed where Owen slept at night.

You can see the wet brick at the bottom. Our fireplace looks like this in the hallway.


Water ran out that closet and made the ice mess.


Doesn't look too bad. Fortunately, unfortunately (?) the insulation has absorbed most of the water.

I just took these. Bad picture with no light. But this is one of the worse places on our bedroom ceiling. Neil had poked those holes to let the water run through. The ceiling is very noticeably sagging here.



Hard to see, but it's still dripping here.


Neil took up the carpet, and our concrete slab is still very wet.


This is the attic. A little funny, Neil took the camera up to get pictures to show the insurance guy. A little while after he got down, he asked for the camera to show the pictures to someone. I didn't have it. So we started the hunt for the camera. He just kept saying, I hope I didn't drop it up there. Well, he did! We just got lucky he saw it sticking out of the insulation.


Wet insulation

So, with our new metal roof going on in the next few weeks, lost to a hail storm in October, the new exterior paint, new master bedroom, new carpet, and remodel of our bathroom, (hopefully with a new shower), it's gonna feel like a whole new house! I had jokingly asked Neil if we could use the leftover insurance money from the roof to buy new carpet, he said NO! Well, Neil, I think God decided I needed new carpet!! Praise God!!