washed away!

May tenth is always a special day in our house. It is the birthday of our now thirteen year old. It also usually falls around mother's day." A" was born on mother's day so many short yeas ago. May tenth just always seems to be a bit of a bigger celebration for us. Not because any of our other girls are less special. Simply because thirteen years ago I gave birth to my first child, becoming a mother for the first time, on a mother's day, and all at the age of seventeen.

May tenth this year was to be a simple celebration, it fell on a Tuesday. We would go on a afternoon trip into the city, do some shopping and have a nice meal. We had planned a huge celebration party at the end of the month for her and her friends!

That morning i woke up, got both big girls up and off to school and took the laundry to the basement. I dumped them on the floor in front of my new washer, and threw a load in. Then i continued on getting ready for our birthday trip.

I must make a side note here about our basement. We live down there! Seriously, eighty-five percent of our time is spent down there. Our toy room is down there, our family room is down there, laundry room, spare bedroom, a bathroom, all our crafts, but most important of all - our birthday girls bedroom is down there.

It is often a terrible mess with toys, video games, and dress up clothes as far as the eye can see! We also have all our treasured memories down there. Our basement has become the center of life for us.

It rained all morning and was supposed to rain all day, and even into the night. But  we were not going to let rain stop us from celebrating our teenager! So we packed up and were on our way.

It rained the entire two hour drive. But we still managed to go shopping, get her saxophone fixed, and out for a nice meal. And it continued to rain. It didn't pour in the city, just a constant shower.

At nine pm we crammed back into the mini van and headed out on the road back home. The three girls started nodding off, in between the good songs that is!

We hit our half way point and my cell phone rang. Turning down the music, which woke the girls, I answered. It was our neighbor who had been back and forth to our house all week using our washroom. She had been renovating hers all week. I thought maybe I had forgot to leave the door unlocked for them and she was calling to see about a key.

Instead she informed me that our town was flooding! We had declared a state of emergency, and that included our basement, it also was flooding! These words were very foreign in my ears. How could that be? We had only been gone a half day!! For some reason my mind couldn't adjust a crisis like this to the time slot it had been givem. Thanking her for calling I hung up thinking: "um ya right!

Jarrett and I chewed this info over for a bit. I mean what could we really do? We were still driving with an hour left to go! We became very aware that it was STILL raining! Our back yard had flooded last spring and this, not once had we gotten water in the basement. So how, in one half day, could we flood?

Both big girls awake, listening, and now crying as fear set in that all they held dear would be afloat upon our return.

It took a bit of convincing, and a lengthy family prayer, but they  did calm down and get back to sleep.

We pulled into the driveway, Jarrett went into the house by himself first. To get a handle on the situation and to prepare us for the worst. Returning to the van he informed me that we did in fact have water in the basement!

Water, water is easily cleaned up. We will pump it out and dry it up! Everything down there can be washed and cleaned and fixed!

Opening the front door and stepping inside the house we were hit with a smell. SEWAGE! Sewage is a whole new ball game. Our hearts sank to the bottom where all our treasured possessions, memories, and life lived.

Our thirteen year old bust out into tears, sobbing about losing her room on her birthday and how terrible this was!

We had become washed away!