Water, Water Everywhere

Last year for Christmas, we crammed everything into one day, and it pretty much wore us all out. This year we did our family celebration in the morning when Adam got home from work, and then went to his parents for the afternoon. Saturday, we spent the afternoon at my parents. This method seemed to be much easier on the kids than trying to go everywhere in one day…and eat all that food. ;)

I'll do an actual Christmas post once I download the pictures…we had a blast. However, when we came home Saturday, we had a most unexpected visitor…3"of water covering the entire basement. If I hadn't been too tired, I would have considered launching fish to let Kaylee get some indoor use of her fishing pole. Instead, I pretty much cried. Then pulled it together. The dogs were huddled together in their crate to avoid getting wet. They were thankful to be released from the basement pool.

We then called in the troops. Adam's parents were the first to arrive. I had already put Logan to bed, but Kaylee was overtired and was refusing bed. Fortunately Penny was there to step in to take care of her because I was in no frame of mind to deal with that.

My dad and brother were the next to arrive with blocks to lift things up on, fans and extension cords. I gave Adam a new Shop-Vac for Christmas, but wasn't really planning on him needing to use it the following day. I mean it would have been fine if he wanted to clean out the car, but a flood in the basement? Really? After running the vacuum for forever, talking to a professional, Adam and I decided we would rip up all of our new extremely wet carpet and just trash it. We didn't want to pay a fortune on professional dehumidifiers and fans only to find the carpet still smelled and we would need to replace it anyway.

A while later Megan and Justin showed up to finish helping. Megan cleaned upstairs…washing dishes, putting away toys and sweeping the floor.

We've been through this before. We know how it goes. When Kaylee was a few months old, our kitchen had to be entirely replaced due to water damage. I was without a fully functional kitchen for three months. Fortunately, this time being in the basement, we can go on and close the door as we progress in the clean up. The carpet was the biggest loss, so it could have been much worse. It's going to be a headache to deal with, but it's going to work out.

I had it on my list to really work in the basement, cleaning and organizing, but I hadn't really intended to clean under the carpet and buy new carpet. ;)