Down Came the Rain...

and washed Lynamland out.

Yep, that's right. We flooded.

I'll start by telling you that we own a sump pump. It works. It kept us dry in the flood of 2008. It kept the house dry in the flood of '93. But the melting of the 62 inches of snow in '09 and the rainy end of winter of 10 did us in. Overnight. By morning, it was working again.

Thursday morning I was on my way to work when I stepped into a 1/2 inch or so of water. Sheer panic, and a few tears later, I yelled up to Coach for help. We began getting a few things moved, but at that time, we had no clue how or where to start.

Thursday was the second and last day of conferences for those of us in good ol' DMPS. Luckily, I had done all of my conferences Wednesday night so I called in sick. I took Lovebug for her second round of flu shots, dropped her off to daycare and came home to start the tedious job ahead. Luckily, the water was not high enough to ruin any of our furniture, or Coach's computer which was sitting on a piece of wood on the floor. We did lose a precious piece of mail... our 2010 census stuff. Shoot. All of those commercials had me so pumped to fill it out, and well, now it's gone.

Coach and I ran to Home Depot to do some price checking on new floors (we new we were going to need them), and picked up some tarps. We spread the tarps out in the garage, which was also wet, moved several furniture items out, then Coach had to leave for conferences.

While he was away, I ripped up the entire carpet, all of the padding, (which let me tell you, that stuff is extremely pourous). and drug it strip by strip into the driveway. Oh my goodness!!! By 2pm that day, I had it all done, had most of the water sucked up into the good ol' wet/dry vac (special shout out to John & Virginia, Holly's (daycare) parents for letting us borrow their 16 gallon one) and had the fans turned on. I took a little nap then got back to it. I got the water out of the laundry room, then used a towel to do some final drying.

I worked, and worked, and worked. That is, until Lovebug's arrival home from daycare. Then it was playtime :). Fast forward to 5:30, our old neighbor brought us their de-humidifier and some more fans. Got those going. Fast forward to 6:30. Aunt Mandy and Uncle Josh showed up. Josh helped me finish the final project of emptying the closet under the stairs and drying that out while Aunt Mandy spent some quality time with Lovebug. Even BIGGER shout out to them for that!!

By the time Coach got home at 8:30, the basement was finished and drying.

This morning, Coach took the carpet and padding I had drug into the driveway to the landfill. Good-bye big brown. Oh, how I hated that carpet!!! Then we went to The Home Depot where we got some new paint and some new laminate floor planking.

My original plan was to head back to my parents' place this weekend so they could see Lovebug healthy for once, but didn't think it was going to happen. Coach however, told me to go. I think he may have been slightly impressed by my drive to get the basement done, so he told me to go. Ok Coach, not gonna argue you on that one! :)

So, we traveled back to Grandma Sally & Grandpa Dale's for the weekend while Coach stayed home to fill in every.single.hole in the wall and re-paint. As I type this, he is finishing the final wall.

Trust me, I have TONS of pictures of this to share (except for the painting), but I don't have the cord to plug my camera into my parents' computer. So, you will just have to wait.

We are super bummed that this happened, but we are super excited to see the transformation of the basement. We've both wanted to do something new down there for quite some time now, and I guess this was God's way of kickin' us in the behind to get it done.

Next week will come new carpet, reassembling the furniture, and me re-decorating. Manland is going to grow up into a more sophisticated Gentlemanland. Ha! Coach will still have his memorabilia, but it will be done in a much more tasteful way.

Unfortunately, we had to unplug the modum since ya know, it was down in the ocean. Err, I mean basement. That means no Internet at home. Unless Coach decides to hook it up for a little bit. So once I leave Early, I will be back to life with no Internet. I will hopefully get some more information up over the next two days for you all, since I know you're dying to know more :).

For now, I'm signing out and going to go relax.