"Our" Flood

Saturday morning my kids came running into my room. "Mom! Mom! A pipe burst and now our back yard is flooded!" Um...uh...huh? I am not exactly known as the world's brightest coin first thing in the morning, and that day was no exception. It took a few minutes for my fuzzy, sleep-induced brain to wake up and figure out something might be wrong.

Sure enough, the faucets wouldn't turn on, and in the back yard I could see a giant swamp attempting to take over the back portion by the fence. Not until going outside to really assess the damage did I come to realize this wasn't just out house. A pipe down the street had burst, causing a river of water to course through a portion of our neighborhood.

Just outside my house a few firefighters and city workers collected in a circle, trying to figure out what was going on and what to do next. After making arrangements for me and the kids to go potty elsewhere, we began to assess the damage to our own home. We weren't too concerned until word that a few of the homes' crawl spaces were beginning to fill with water. Sure enough, so was ours. I think with the rising sun and warming of the land, the water began to find places to go besides six inches above ground.

Here's a picture of our crawl space. We didn't have too much water at the hole itself, but it had gathered several inches in one particular corner. My hubby set up a water pump where we attached our blue hose and threaded it through the kitchen, into the living room and out the front door.

Here we are coming out the front door, with little Miss A's mildly muddy shoes. She couldn't seem to stop wanting to come out into the action. While with daddy she got to sit in the front of a fire truck! Good times. Too bad on the way back to the house she slipped and landed in mud - and with all the water sitting outside the house, rather than inside the pipes, getting her cleaned up wasn't the funnest activity ever.
Turned out the blue hose wasn't long enough, so we had to bring in the green one too. This managed to make it out to the gutter, where we lovingly added to the all ready gushing stream.

Here's a small sampling of our 'almost swamp.' I kept thinking, if it froze, we'd have an awesome ice skating rink! But if you think this is bad, wait until the next picture.

My next door neighbor is an avid gardner. What you're seeing here should actually be the recently cleaned up and immaculate garden area. Instead, I could have sent the kids in for a pretty awesome mud bath. Those from the city working to help with the damage had to bring in a big pump to get rid of this water into the park behind our houses. As this water diminished, so did ours. Ah well. No ice rink this year.

I wanted to take loads more pictures of everything, but when a worker came up to me asking if everything was okay and that they hadn't personally done any damage to our home, I realized I was making everyone nervous. But I still got two cool shots out of it. This first one is the little 'waves' of mud running up the length of our driveway. It still makes me sad to think of the awesome pictures I could have taken while it was "fresh."

Here's the muddy mess at the end of our driveway. I think it looks amazing! Granted, I'm not looking forward to cleaning it up, but hey, I know an awesome display of the force of nature when I see one.

All in all it wasn't the best way to begin what was supposed to be a relaxing Saturday, but I do have to give props out to those who worked so hard to fix it all. The pipes were fixed and water returned to homes by early afternoon. Some of the men stayed until after the sun set in an effort to help make sure certain homes were properly cared for. Thanks guys!