So on Wednesday, it was predicted that it will rain. No big deal as we've been having some good rains lately. I went about my day, running in the morning, doing some computer work, then I picked up Maddie from school, had lunch and just about after 1pm, it started to rain.
It was a GOOD rain, even hailing at times. It got so hard at one point that I couldn't help myself but stop what I was doing, grab my camera and take shots of the down pour from my bedroom window.
I was enjoying my time, cozied up with my sweater, hearing the rain fall down while I worked on editing some pictures. Excuse the mess on my work table, I had a slight cold hence the tissue and I had a few SD cards plus flash drives sitting in front of me.
I was also goofing around with Maddie which, by the way, is very insistent she changes into her Belle costume AFTER school EVERYDAY!
Then after some work, Maddie and I decided to do some scrapbooking so we headed off to our craft room. The rain was still going outside and we were working away at our projects when Maddie started screaming and told me that there was water coming in through the bottom of the window. Where my table is situated in the room, all I had to do was turn my head to the right and sure enough there WAS water that had come down through the window, then the wall and all the way down the floor which was soaking up my rug already.
With more inspection, I found out that there was a good 3" of water in the window well. Maddie was already crying at this point. She got really scared. She thought that water will actually fill up our home and we would drown. After a quick comfort and explaining to her that it would be fine, I called up Mitch and told him the situation. Then I grabbed my jacket and boots and ran to the side of the house with a bucket to try to get the water our of the window well.
After about 15 minutes of that, I went back inside and by then the water had reached all the way on the other side of the room where most of my scrapbook supplies are stored. At this point, I got really worried. I know these are just items but in my head, I knew for a fact that there are some things here that are not replaceable.
I quickly, and with all my effort and strength, moved everything I can out of the room. Pulled otu the soaking rug, grabbed some towels and buckets and went to work soaking up all the water. I managed to get everything *almost* dried when it was time to pick up Marcus.
Got in the car and went off to Marcus' school. When we got back, I was on Mommy duty, giving the kid's snacks and then started homework with Marcus. After about 5 minutes into homework time, I had the strongest impression to go back down into the basement and check on things down there.
I was very surprised to see that water had started coming in again and this time, it's coming in faster! I got the kids dressed up with jackets and boots and we ALL went out to the side of the house to start getting the water our of the window well again. This time we each had a distinct job to be more efficient in our work. Maddie was holding the window well cover up, while I was inside the window well grabbing water and putting it in a bucket which Marcus carried to the front lawn to dump the water. We did this for a while when a neighbor came and after seeing our distress, she called her husband which quickly came with a portable pump and pumped out the water from the window well.
He helped me a lot because while the pump was going, I was inside trying to get rid of the water accumulating on my craft room floor before it spreads to the rest of the basement.
We did this back and forth work until 6:30 pm when we got caught up and the pump did the rest of the work for us.
When Mitch got home, he purchased a sump pump and installed a make shift hole using a 5 gallon bucket and placed the pump in there. Because the rain was continually pouring, this job took him 3 hours to finish.
Needless to say we were super exhausted when we finally hit the bed at 12:30am.
I was telling Mitch that my uneventful day turned out to be one of the most unforgettable times in my life. Not only because I had to deal with a flood in my craft room of all places but it also proved to me that I have strenght I didn't know I have. He asked me if I took pictures to scrapbook. I laughed at this comment because would I really be thinking of photos in the middle of my flooding crisis?
But he's right, I can't pass up this event without preserving the moments with pictures so the day after, I took these photos....
Here's what my room looked like. All the furnitures and shelves have been moved either to one side of the room or outside of the room.
this was the makeshift sump pump that Mitch installed the night of the flooding. I still can't imagine that there was 3" of water that filled this window well the day before.
In the chaos of things, I was throwing items into the weight room. As you can see there are boxes, containers and plastic bags all thrown in there.
and for the rest of the shelves, I pulled them to the hallway. When I was taking these things out, I didn't have time to take out the items on the shelves so I was pulling them with ALL the stuff in it. Some of them where really heavy but for some reason I had the physical strength to pull them.
If you've read up to this point....thank you for indulging me in reliving my once in a lifetime flooding story and know that this event as weird as it may sound had reminded me of the hand of the Lord watching over us every minute of our lives. Sometimes we don't know the reason why we are prompted to do things but that's the Spirit guiding us.
I'm just reflecting that if I was not in the room at the time that the water started coming in, I would not probably know that there's flooding till 3-4 hours from then and by that time, who knows how much damage it would've caused. Plus the Lord gave me strength to manage the situation with calmness (to not make the kids scared) and He guided me as to what to do to eliviate the problem. He also gave me such wonderful neighbors that I can rely on especially when Mitch is not around. Truly I am blessed. And the best part of this whole thing......there was not one single scrapbook paper that was damaged by the water.
That in itself is a blessing all on it's own.
Till next time,
Grace
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