We came home Wednesday evening, changed into our comfortable (i.e. stretchy) clothes and began our ritual of winding down and settling in.
I had just poured a glass of milk to go with my healthy homemade chocolate cupcake (for real) when London yelled upstairs from his room, "My floor is wet"!
Cupcakes were dropped, milk was abandoned and Matt, the kids and I ran downstairs to what we new awaited us...
a broken sump pump and a basement filling with rain water.
How relaxing.
This has happened before so we knew the drill.
Pants were hiked up, valuable things were moved to higher ground and Matt set to work trying to fix the pump as water continued trickling in.
This occurred at 11:00 PM (of course) which means that we couldn't just tricky-trot out the door to purchase a new sump pump to replace the defective one.
No sir-ree!
So when Matt realized that there was no fixing the broken one he threw on clothes to run to the nearest Super Wal-Mart that was a.) open and b.) sold sump pumps.
This happened to be 20 minutes away.
Meanwhile my basement (and the military-like proficiency of myself and the children) began to resemble the interior of a submarine taking on water from a direct hit to the starboard bow.
Minus the little round windows.
The kids and I were taking turns using the shop vac to suck up the water, haul it up the basement steps and dump it on the ground.
This was probably as futile as it sounds, but it gave us something to do that seemed to have a purpose.
Until the shop vac blew up.
Then I called my mom and dad in the hopes that they happened to have an unused sump pump laying around somewhere.
Turns out they didn't.
But my brother did.
So Dad took it (borrowed it) from his garage, plugged it up and we began cleaning up as we waited for Matt to get back home.
He finally arrived and then he and I took turns filling and emptying dad's (much larger and therefore much more effective) shop vac.
We were up until 3:30 in the morning cleaning and keeping watch on the temporary sump pump and then drove to Lowe's to purchase a new one first thing in the morning.
Matt then decided to cut some wood as we're going through ours quite quickly and we're trying to use only wood heat this winter.
His chainsaw wouldn't start.
He took it to the chainsaw fixing guy and he fixed it for $50 (two hours later).
Matt then headed into the woods, cut some wood and loaded it into his truck with the kids' help.
(I would've helped, of course, but I was in the (warm) house working on these very pictures.)
Then he hit a stump and ruined his tire on the truck.
In fact, the only new tire on the truck.
He's now hiding out in his room...
curled up in the fetal position...
sucking his thumb.
B
You can see the rest of this session here under "Hill Family".
4 comments:
Cardinals vs. Cubs I'm surprised this couple is still married!
You make terrible things sound so funny:) Sorry about all the trouble, love the pictures, and we will send chocolate:) Cause everything is better from behind a box of chocolates!
Did Aunt Marge see these!!!
Awww I think it's adorable!!! Poor Matt I fell so sorry for him :(
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