So it was raining REALLY hard on Tuesday. I woke up to an email from Clayton to keep an eye on the basement (we've had minor flooding issues in the past but nothing like this and we thought we'd fixed the problem). So I checked it a couple times and it was dry. The last time I checked it, it was dry and I came back upstairs and looked in the backyard. Our patio was about 3 inches underwater. The water was flowing from the back to the front of the house like a freakin' river. I had never seen anything like it. So I called Clayton at work and told him and said "It looks pretty bad. What should I do?" He said it should be fine, but to look at the drain at the bottom of our driveway and make sure it isn't clogged. (The driveway goes downhill into our garage and if the drain clogs, it floods our garage and basement). So I got off the phone and opened the door to the basement and the landing of the stairs was already filled with water. In less than five minutes it went from completely dry, to most of the basement being about 2 inches under water.
Our basement is partially finished and the finished room is Caleb's playroom - which of course was a mess because he's 3 and upon entering the room, he immediately dumps all of the toy boxes out onto the floor. So all of his toys were floating in brown, yucky water, as were my piles of sorted laundry. I ran back upstairs and called Clayton back and frantically told him to come home. By the time he and his dad got there, there was about EIGHT inches of water in our entire basement (except our walk in closet had the door shut, so only about 2 inches of water got in there... whew). And the water outside the garage, at the bottom of the driveway, was up to about 2 feet high when Clayton got home. It even dented our 1 year old garage door. Grrrr.
With the help of Clayton's amazing family, we have spent the last several days doing 500 loads of laundry, ripping out carpet, throwing things away, cleaning... and we have soooo much more to do. *sigh* Among the most important things that got wet: several of our wedding photos (we only have about 10 photos from our wedding so this was especially sad), some books we got from Clayton's grandmother when she passed away last summer, Clayton's drawings/paintings from when he was younger, ALL of our mortgage paperwork (don't even get me started on why this was on the bottom shelf of a bookcase in the basement...grrr), about half of Caleb's art from daycare (of course it was all of my favorite pieces that I'd put into an album), and the list goes on. The toys, furniture, etc can be replaced but it's the memorabilia stuff that makes me the most sad.
And no... we didn't have flood insurance. Apparently most people don't. Lesson learned.
Here are a few photos after Clayton, his dad, and Maria been working on it. I didn't think to take photos of it when it was at it's highest. But you can see from the debris on the side of the garage door (the last photo) how high it got.
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