We are off to a swimming start....

I love to write funny stories and it wonderful to keep this blog as a record. I can look back and recall the bean stalks that grew in my kitchen overnight, hitting my cleaning lady's car, and, of course, notoriously telling the world I pooped my pamper. Today, I had another doozy of a day and what better whay to handle it than add it to my blog archives for later laughter! (Though I hope these humorous tales of my real life decrease in number!)

This weekend I'm watching my friend Christina's two little girls (2 and 1). They are cute little things and they've been here quite a lot so I don't foresee it being a problem. The woman who was initially supposed to watch them so Christina and James could have night away had to cancel. Anyone who is a parent knows how important nights away are to a marriage. We agreed to keep them, cuz really how bad could it be? It's less than 36 hours. There is always TV and I firmly believe in keeping marriages strong. If we are going to walk through life together- sometimes we are going to have to pitch in and help one another whether the timing is convenient or not.

Keeping the girls isn't "ideal" only because I am sick. I have been suffering from a cold all week, thereby not sleeping great. Chloe was also up quite a bit last night bothered by her emerging teeth. Still, I was determined to not just survive this day and a half but give the girls a rip roarin' good time and make sure Christina and James got their much needed time away knowing their girls were being not just cared for in their absence but loved.

This morning I put on my spiritual armor and comitted the time to prayer. I got up, picked up, and ran to the store first thing so we would be well stocked;) I prepped as much as I could, even setting out lunch supplies before going to get Ava because the girls were to arrive right as we would get home from picking her up from school. I made sure I had my coke on hand, just in case;)

When we got home, Phin had fallen asleep in the car so I ran in with Chloe to set her in the high chair so I could carry him in. Imagine my shock when I entered the kitchen and stepped into a lake! Immediately, I noticed the faucet running.

I am an idiot- plain and simple. In all my preparation haste, I left the faucet running. It ran for over an hour, producing about 1/2 inch of water on the kitchen floor.

Ava thought it was a hoot and began to dance in it! I laughed. James was ringing the doorbell to drop off the girls as I was running to get towels. He dropped off the girls and went on his merry way; I do have to admit I was momentarily jealous that he was going to a world of freedom as I was dealing with a catastrophe;) Thankfully Kailee was sleeping and although Abby did wet her socks entering the kitchen, she easily entertained herself in the living room while I was cleaning up. Lunch was late, Phin stayed asleep too long in the car and I used every clean towel in the house to clean it up. But I did it. Phew!

I was done. I put Chloe, Abby and Phin down for nap and was about to sit down to get myself some lunch and maybe check me a little facebook. Something told me to check under the sink...crap! more water. Every box under the sink was saturated. The brillo pads were all soaked in their box and who knew we had like a million boxes of trash bags! Thank God the bags themselves are plastic! The open box of dishwasher detergent tabs was now just an open wet box of moosh;P and frankly it was just a mess. I was opening and tossing, opening and tossing when Ava interrupted me in a panic. "You are throwing away box tops, Mom!" Let's just stop here and say that there are times when a preschooler's brilliance is just annoying. The upside is the boxes were so wet, I didn't need to grab scissors, I just ripped those babies right off. I hope her school appreciates the 20 cents.

I finished up, proud as heck of myself for conquering the bump in my day. At one point, Ava asked me, "Why are you laughing mom?" I explained to her that sometimes in life you have to chose whether to laugh or cry and laughter made you feel so much better. I was patting myself on the back for seizing the opportunity to teach Ava a great lesson as I loaded the towels in the laundry baket to take them downstairs.

"Pride comes before a fall."

The basket was too heavy to carry because the towels were so saturated with water. I dragged the basket and learned a life lesson of my own. A large round laundry basket full of sopping wet towels cannot be smoothly dragged down a flight of stairs. I was soon looking at all of the sopping wet towels scattered at my feet and all down the basement steps. Yep-- pride comes before a fall. I was just thankful it was the towels that fell and not me.

I was laughing to myself as I picked them up and put them in the basket and right as I finished I noticed the basement carpet near the storage room door (the storage room is directly under the kitchen). It was wet. OH NO! It couldn't be....could it?

Indeed not only had my kitchen flooded, but water had leaked into the basement. As I opened the door, I realized that there is a lot more water that comes out of the kitchen faucet than I realized or imagined.

My "clean" towels were now sitting wet in the laundry basket, what was a girl to do? All the dirty towels and sheets that were waiting to be washed went to work. Shoot, I even used the wash clothes and hand towel and a few cleaning rags by the washer to help out , as well. The worse part of all? Because we had a large flood in the basement at our last home, we "learned our lesson" and put all our valuable items on the top shelves in the storage room. Thing is- when the flood comes through the ceiling...well, that doesn't really help.

Yes, my friends I spent naptime today opening sopping wet boxes of my husband's childhood memoribilia and laying out pictures and all sorts of stuff, saving his family's history. (Since his parents divorced and wanted nothing to do with each other they gave every old picture or significant item to us. And after going through it all, quite a bit of insignificant stuff too, I think.)

Very little was ruined, but now we have lots of reorganizing to do when it all dries out and I think we'll be emptying out the humidifier every hour or so for a couple days.

Yep- this weekend is off to a swimming start- quite literally.