All In A Day's Work...

My dad stayed with us this past weekend. The kids have never spent time with him before so it was exciting to have him here for the whole weekend!

We went and picked him up Thursday afternoon and on Friday we went about our normal routine. I brought Sarah to school early in the morning and then waited for my dad to wake up. He and I had stayed up pretty late talking Thursday night so he didn't get out of bed till 10:30. He went outside on our back patio to wake up a bit and I decided to bring Luke with me and join him. Patrick was busy in his room playing with his train set. Several minutes of conversation passed and Patrick skipped through the door towards us. Using my excellent powers of observation, I noticed that he was wearing a different pair of denim shorts. I inquired about this change of clothes as it usually means he wet his pants. He denied having an accident, but the "innocent" smile and twinkle in his bright blue eyes alerted me that something truly terrible had occurred.

I went inside the door and saw a puddle on the floor. I was actually relieved at this point because the puddle was on the tile for once instead of on the carpet. Just as I was hollering for Patrick to come inside to help clean up his mess, my voice trailed off and my stomach sank as my my eyes followed the "puddle"....down the entire length of the hallway...and to the carpets on either side of the tile...and down the hall all the way to the bedrooms...

The back of the house was flooded. Literally flooded. I tossed the baby to my dad and ran to the bathroom to turn off the full-force running faucet of the bathtub. The tub had clearly not been drained from bath time and was three-quarters full when Patrick turned the water on. I really should have taken pictures-it was bad. But that was not the time to bust out the camera. I had to move FAST to get towels onto the carpet in order to stop the water from seeping into it even more. Then I had to get the shop-vac from the utility room and take the baby so my dad could start sucking up the water all down the hallway. Of course, this occurred at the exact time I had to get Sarah from school. So I left my poor dad to shop-vac the water while I went to retrieve Sarah.

When we got back to the house dad had the water up from the tile, but the carpet was a different story. I tried everything-spent an hour breaking my back carrying my huge baby and soaking up water with towels, the shop-vac...it was soooo much; there was no way to get it all up. I set up fans to try to dry it to no avail. (Of course my husband came home later that evening and asked what I was doing while the house was flooding. I even had a witness and he still didn't believe me that it was a matter of MINUTES-seriously no more than 3 MINUTES-that all this happened.)

It gets better: while I was slaving away trying to dry up our carpet Patrick dumped out a gallon-sized ziplock baggie full of cookies. I hate trying to explain these disasters to my husband...I know it's hard to believe unless it happens to you, but it does really happen in a blink of an eye, before there's time to react. So I vacuumed up the cookies and as I was putting the vacuum away I heard Sarah and Patrick starting to argue. I sprinted to the kitchen where they were sitting at the bar counter and right in mid-sentence: "STOP-YOU'RE GOING TO SPI....." the kids knocked over my glass of Coke. Onto my laptop. At this point I was at wits' end and spanked both of them on the spot and banished them to their room. I looked at the clock--and shook my head when I saw that it was not even noon.

It is a little sad, but I was glad that my dad was there to witness the events of the morning. He was able to back up my story and basically give me a little credibility with my hubby.

If anyone has any tips for the carpet I would LOVE to hear them. It smells horrible, like mildew. I can't seem to get all the water out no matter what and now that it has been a few days it seems like the damage is permanent. Sigh...