The Washer Filled Up and the Floods Followed

What an adventure we find our lives to be at times.  We are definitely anything but boring.  Wednesday night I talked myself into going to a Relief Society activity.  Before I left, I asked George if he would switch the laundry loads and clean the bathroom.  I sat down with my dinner and was enjoying the guest speaker on Strengthening Relationships when I got a frantic call from my husband telling me to come home because the living room was flooded.  I raced out of there and came home to find an inch of water all over our first floor.  The laundry room, the living room, the kitchen, the storage area under our stairs.  I was kind of shocked.  Our washer was filling up and didn't stop filling up, it just kept going.  George had done what I had asked him to do and was cleaning the bathroom upstairs.  When he went back downstairs he found the water hadn't turned itself off and the house was flooded.  It also moved into the apartments behind us and next to us.

We moved as much stuff as quickly as possible.  George raced to his parents to get a shop vac and then our friends Reed and Steve showed up to help get as much water up as possible.  My dad got us in touch with a disaster relief guy.  We called our landlady who called her insurance and it went from there.  The soaked carpet was ripped up and fans were placed around our apartment to dry the floors.

We had to move most of our furniture and the stuff that was in the storage area up to our second bedroom.  I have to be honest, when I go in that bedroom I get a taste of what it must feel like to be a hoarder and I don't like it one bit.  We also have a little left in the corner of our kitchen.

 

After getting no sleep that night George and I went to work and school yesterday.  I left work early and went home when George was done with school in an effort to get some semblance of order around us, do all the wet laundry, and hopefully get some sleep.  George helped me get our room set up with all our Christmas stuff so that we can at least still have a Christmas tree and such. 

The disaster relief guys came back last night to work on getting the walls dry.  They had to tear out parts of the walls to get the air in them.  The bottom picture is hard to see but it is a picture of a hole between our apartment and our neighbors apartment.

Steve and Charlie cutting the wall

All in all, we realize how blessed we have really been.  George was home when it happened so it was caught sooner than later.  We had fabulous friends who came to help us clean up what we could before the disaster relief team got there.  We were lucky that my dad knew someone for us to call right away.  We're lucky that the insurance agency is covering everything but $250.  We were blessed that it was only the first floor and not the whole apartment.  None of our property was severely damaged.  We will wind up with at least new carpet (which we had been asking for) and our landlady won't even have to pay for it.  I get a new washing machine.  It has wound up providing an opportunity for George to do some contract work on the side helping the disaster relief team.  Overall, I feel like Heavenly Father is watching us, blessing us, and taking care of us.  We were reminded as well that we have a home still and there are so many people out there that have it worse than us.  We can live in one room for awhile.

Flooding

Our downstairs flooded.  We were up all night.  Stupid washer.  Story to come.

Christmas Date

I love Christmas!  Even more so this year because George is not working retail.  We put our tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving.  I love how it looks. We have the words Hope, Peace, and Joy on it.  It is our reminder that there are things to hope for in this world and we can have peace and joy in our lives.

 I took an idea from the Dating Divas and ran with it.  I made George a Christmas Countdown that has a service, compliment, or activity for every day until Christmas.  It took a lot of time and work but it has been so worth it.

 

The Day 3 card was a planned out date also adapted from the Dating Divas website.  I used the format for their Baby It's Cold Outside Date and of course things got modified to fit our own needs.  The first thing we did was pick up a CD of the Forgotten Carols music from the library.  I love the Forgotten Carols and have been wanting to listen to the music so it was our background for all the locations we drove to and from.  It brought the spirit into our date in a way I didn't expect.  After picking up the CD we went to a tree lot.  My family pretty much always had fake trees when I was growing up so I don't remember ever going to the tree lot but we visited this particular one because of what they had out front.

We thought it was pretty fun.  Turns out Mater is there to raise funds for a little boy who was in a car accident so we did a little donation as well.  While we were there we figured we would wander around the tree lot for a moment.  I loved the pine smell.

 Next it was off to Kohl's to use some Kohl's cash and do a little Christmas shopping.  I love free money.  We particularly thought that hat was so George, don't you agree?

Our next stop on our busy date night was the Riverwoods.  There is just something about this place at Christmas time that I absolutely love.  We visited Santa, had dinner at La Jolla (we didn't realize how pricey it was till we sat down but oh boy it was yummy), took a carriage ride, and wandered till we were so frozen we had to get in the car to defrost.

Once we were all done with the outdoor stuff we went home to watch the Forgotten Carols on DVD.  We had hot chocolate, mint grasshopper cookies, crackers, and a cheese ball.  We were reminded of what this season is really about.  We were so thankful for those reminders and for the chance to feel the spirit the way we did.  It was a great date!