Where's an ark when you need one?

Hey, everyone! Long time no blog! Our computer has been 'dangerously low' on disc space on the hard drive which has made it impossible to load photos or for our security to automatically update. Meaning, I couldn't even log in to post anything! *sigh* however, I am finally back on track and have a lot of catching up to do. I am going to start with earlier this month when a really cool thunder storm turned into what Wes and I now call, "THE FLOOD OF '09" I noticed that the roads outside were starting to flood while Kolton and I were on the porch watching the lightning. Wes came home from mutual and started checking our window wells to make sure that we weren't flooding, too. He ran upstairs and said that one of our windows downstairs was flooded half way and leaking down the wall!! I don't know if many of you remember, but we JUST finished our basement in December, so this was pretty serious business! Fortunately, our good neighbor, Dave, brought a pump over and between that and Wes and I hauling buckets of water out of the well, we were able to prevent too much damage. We just had about 5 feet of carpet get soaked. Our neighbors weren't nearly as lucky. Their basement windows shattered from the pressure of the water flooding into them and before long their basement had about a foot or more of muddy water in it! We were able to get enough people over there to help channel the water to a small valley in between our two yards. The same thing happened to Wes's brother, Randy's house, too. In the process, our good neighbor, Dave (the one who helped us earlier) had his foot slashed open by the shattering window in his basement and is now in a post-surgical boot. I just want to say thanks to all of the family and neighbors who helped us with our small ammount of damage and who came through for the rest of the street. It really warmed my heart to see so many people, soaked up to their armpits, scooping up buckets of water and using everything from push brooms to snow shovels to channel the water safely away from the homes. I managed to get a few pictures, even though it was very dark, so here they are!

This is the river between our two yards---anyone have a tube?

If you look close, you can see the wave he is making with the shovel!

This is a small fraction of the help that was there! Five men per window well!

These are my neighbor, Angie's, many books drying in my living room! I think we were able to save most of them, but there were a few sad casualties...

All in all you could say it was an adventure and something our neighborhood will talk about for years!!