Urban Barnyard: "MOM, I don't want a basement anymore"

"Wow it has a basement" that is what we were all saying when we looked at our home a little over three years ago. "Cool" my kids all said. Well, isnt it funny how opinions can change!

Exactly 3 weeks ago today my husband and I were awoke at 3am by my 8year old daughter saying that something was dripping on her. "What did she say" my husband and I both shot up out of bed. We ran down to the basement which is where 3 out of 4 of my kids bedrooms are along with a huge playroom, a bathroom and several storage rooms and we were met with about 3 inches of standing water. Not to mention the sound of running water. "Look mom" and as we looked into my daughter's room we saw that her ceiling was leaking water.

We quickly woke up the other 2 bigger kids and we ran outside to see what had happened and noticed that the entire yard and patio were flooded as well. Apperently the irrigation gate had been left open and when the neighborhood was getting irrigation during the night it came through our gate first.

Where do you start when your entire basement is flooded, your patio is flooded and your yard is flooded? What do you do with the water? Well....My 13 yr old son and I at 3:30am ran to Wal-mart to get push brooms and the girls started trying to get everything they could off of the basement floor. When Preston and I returned from Wal-mart and saw what an incrediably HUGE task was in front of us, I stopped and prayed. I asked the Lord to help me know where to start. I was quickly reassured and it was if the Lord told me exactly what to do....I sent out an email onto our church Prayer Chain and within a few hours we had several people showing up to help. Members from our church youth group came and helped us bring everything up from the basement. We had boxes and bins to pack things into. We had water bottles, donuts, etc...What an amazing gift! I had friends show up and help with the loads of wet laundry. This... all before noon! By that night we had over 350 gallons of water pumped out of the basement and the entire basement cleaned out. The carpet and pad ripped up the old tile under the carpet up and the drywall tore down. We had fans and huge drying equipment brought in. All of this was done by friends and was done free. We didnt have flood insurance and because this was caused by "irrigation" nothing is being covered by insurance. (We have it now!!)

At several points throughout the day, I just stopped and looked around and was so overwhelmed! Not just by the magnitude of what was happening but by how blessed we were to have such a huge amount of help. I told my kids (several times) that this is why it is so important to have friends and a church family. For times like this...

While things are still fairly "tore up" and the kids are still living in my dining room, I am still so grateful for the love and support that we have been shown over these last few weeks. It is going to be a very slow process of getting the basement put back together one piece of drywall at a time. My kids are anxious to get back to the way things were and keep saying, "Mom, we don't want a basement anymore. Can't we just fill it in with dirt?" Gosh, I wish it was just that easy...