I always blog about the happy, eventful things going on in our life, but since I use this as our family journal I figured I had better blog about a not so happy, eventful thing that happened this week. On Tuesday afternoon I had just put Claire down for a nap and I was doing some sewing while I was watching The West Wing. Sidenote: The West Wing is my new Netflix series and I am totally hooked. I love it. Anyway, while I was sewing I could really hear the rain coming down. I walked over to my kitchen window, opened it, and looked outside into the stairwell. I thought to myself, "Wow it is seriously coming down out there. That's a lot of rain!" I went back into my living room, turned on my show, and started working on my sewing again. After several minutes I noticed the rain suddenly seemed much louder. I thought maybe I had accidentally left the window open. I went into the kitchen and saw water pouring in around the door. I ran to the window and flung it open. I looked outside and saw that our entire stairwell was filled with a few feet of water, and it was all pouring into our house.
I quickly called Bryce and told him to come home from work as fast as he could. Bryce's parents own the house we live in, we rent it from them, so next I called my mother-in-law and she said she would get there as quickly as she could. Then I frantically started picking everything up off the floor. I didn't know how deep it was going to get so I gathered up our most expensive items and took them upstairs. My sister-in-law & brother-in-law live in the upstairs apartment. My sister-in-law took Claire and let me start hauling up as much stuff as I could to her apartment.
One of Bryce's brothers got to our house first. We live at the bottom of a pretty steep hill and it just happened to be garbage day. When Bryce's brother arrived he saw that a garbage can across the street was creating a dam and blocking all the water from continuing down the gutter. The garbage can was instead diverting all of the water into our driveway, and straight into our stairwell. He moved the garbage can to stop the water and then came inside to help. Bryce and his other brother arrived soon after and everyone got to work. Luckily the water never got very deep in our house it just soaked into the all the carpet throughout the house. The only thing of ours that got ruined was our electric bathroom scale. I was more than grateful we only had a $15 loss. We had to rip up all of the carpet and use shopvacs to suck out all the water. After all of the carpet was removed we disinfected the entire house, and mopped all of the floors to try to remove all of the germs carried in with the water from the street.
I got our house back in a little bit of order, and we just have to live with cement floors for a few days until the carpet gets replaced. We are so grateful the only thing that was ruined was the carpet...and our bathroom scale ;). The flooding could have been much worse and we feel like we got off really lucky.
Here are a few pictures of the aftermath of the flood. You can see the line on the wall that shows how deep the water was out in the stairwell.
I'm a bit of a neat freak, so to say this has been a little bit of a challenge for me is an understatement. I keep reminding myself that all of this is only temporary, and it seems to keep me hanging in there. Maybe this means our family will get a streak of good luck after all of this...I can only hope!
This past weekend we went on a little camping trip. We camped at Tony's Grove in Logan Canyon and also spent some time up at Bear Lake. We went up on Thursday night and then Bryce's parents and a few of his siblings joined us on Friday.
Here is Bryce pitching our tent! He did the whole thing by himself while I unloaded the car. He's really awesome at that stuff.
Claire got to hang out in the pack 'n play while we got everything set up and unloaded. She had fun rolling around in there and looking up at the trees above her.
We put Claire to bed and then Bryce and I ate tin-foil dinners by the campfire. I only forgot to pack three things; forks, plates, and a lantern/flashlight. So we ate our dinner using pretzel crisps as spoons and used the light from the campfire. Luckily, Bryce's parents & siblings came up the next morning so we only had to survive one night without those things.
Our air mattress went flat on Friday night so I think I got maybe two hours of sleep. Bryce didn't seem to notice and he still slept fine. And most importantly Claire slept great too! She slept through the whole night just like she does in her crib. So that made my horrible night of sleep not seem so bad. Friday morning after we woke up, we ate breakfast and hung out at our campsite for a while and visited with everyone else that had arrived. Later, we decided to head up to Bear Lake to Raspberry days for the afternoon.
This was my first time ever going to Bear Lake, even though I've lived in Utah my whole life (I know!). I was so amazed at how beautiful and blue it was! We stopped at a rest stop on our drive there so I could get a few pictures. I still cannot get over how gorgeous it is! 
At raspberry days, we walked around and looked at all the booths and afterwards got drinks and raspberry shakes. Here's a few pictures of Rory and Claire hanging out while we ate our shakes.
Saturday morning Bryce and I took Claire & Rory for a little hike around Tony's Grove Lake so I could get a few pictures. It was such a pretty place to go camping. There were beautiful pine trees and wildflowers all over.
After our little hike we went back to our campsite, packed everything up, and headed to Bear Lake. We had planned to spend the day boating, swimming, and hanging out on the beach. Bryce's parent's boat unfortunately had a few mechanical problems so we ended up just swimming and playing on the beach. I didn't mind one bit, I didn't even miss the boat! (I think all the boys in the family were a little bummed they didn't get to do their extreme tubing though.)
Claire loved the water as usual! We took her floatie and swam with her in the lake for awhile until she got too cold. After swimming we warmed up on the beach and ate snacks & hung out day with the family. I realized as I was writing this post this was our first little family vacation since we've had Claire! We had such a great time! It was so much fun getting to spend the whole weekend together. I told Bryce on our drive home that we have to take our kids to Bear Lake every year! He happily agreed.
Here are a few pictures of the aftermath of the flood. You can see the line on the wall that shows how deep the water was out in the stairwell.
I'm a bit of a neat freak, so to say this has been a little bit of a challenge for me is an understatement. I keep reminding myself that all of this is only temporary, and it seems to keep me hanging in there. Maybe this means our family will get a streak of good luck after all of this...I can only hope!
