Saturday, September 10, 2011

No, we haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

Wow, a lot has happened in the 2 weeks I haven’t blogged. I know I have some faithful readers out there who are probably annoyed with me…sorry about that. We’ve had a lot going on.

For starters, we had a hurricane. We were VERY fortunate that we didn’t have any damage from the hurricane. Some branches from our tree in the back yard fell down, but other than that we were fine.

This week we have had an abundance of rain! More rain than I think I’ve ever seen in my life! It was coming down in sheets, and I spent my day checking the drain near our basement door, and walking around the edge of the basement making sure we didn’t have any leaks. Suddenly, in the midst of the downpour, I heard something click on. It is at this point in the night that I wanted to personally find the previous owners of our townhouse and thank them profusely for installing a sump pump in the basement. In the 3 years we have lived in this townhouse, this was the first time the sump pump has ever clicked on. I examined the hole where the pump is and discovered that even though the pump had clicked on, it wasn’t actually pumping water out. It was only a matter of time before the hole filled and our basement began to flood.

I did what any wife would do…I called Joe. Joe did what any husband would do…he called his friend, Casey, who knows WAY more about this than we do. Since Casey is an awesome friend, he went to Home Depot and bought us a new pump, then drove to our house (in the pouring rain and trying to avoid flooded streets) and installed the new pump. Immediately the water was pumped out and we were safe and sound. Thank heavens for great friends!

Unfortunately several of our friends and neighbors spent all day Friday cleaning up from the floods. Many basements were ruined. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…I’ll take 2 feet of snow over rain any day!

We didn’t do anything too exciting for Labor Day. We decided to stay close to home and on Sunday afternoon headed to Casey’s house (and his wife and their 2 daughters) and had a camp out in their back yard. There was a lot of hype surrounding the camp out. All three girls were very excited to roast marshmallows and sleep outside in tents. Considering the Grubbs have a family of 4 and we have a family of 3, our tents were very large for what we actually needed. I think our tent is supposed to sleep 5 (maybe 6) and their tent is the Taj Mahal of tents and can probably sleep a whopping 10 people. Their tent even has a screen porch if you want to sit outside but don’t want to deal with the bugs. Seriously.

Anyway, we had a great time, but as it turned out Joe and Ella slept inside the air conditioned house, while I felt the need to prove my Wyoming roots and slept outside in the tent alone. It started to rain and I stood firm. I stayed outside all night and was completely fine. It was a fun adventure and Ella and Ginny are already planning on doing it again.

School starts on Monday, so we went to Ella’s Pre-K open house yesterday. She’s still attending the same preschool at our church, but this year she’s in the Pre-K program and is very excited. Joe and I are especially excited because Mrs. Bull is her teacher! We’ve known Mrs. Bull and her husband since before Ella was in the picture, and they’ve been some of our biggest supporters since Ella was born. We love them! In fact, we have lunch with them a lot after church on Sundays. We know several of the kids in Ella’s class, and the new kids seem very nice. I think all three of us are more confident this year. Ella is still Ella…she’s shy, but she was really excited to see the other kids on Friday, and since she already knows Mrs. Bull I’m hopeful that this year she’ll come out of her shell more. I have high hopes for this year and am looking forward to starting on Monday. Of course I’ll be a complete basket case when Monday morning rolls around, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

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