The Flood

Last night, on our way home from the McKell Family Reunion (my mom's mom's side of the family), we got a call from the bishop asking where to shut off our water because our basement was flooding! All I heard of the conversation was Dad saying, "Oh crud. Oh, crud," so I knew something bad had happened. A family in our neighborhood had been on a walk by our house and saw water shooting up in the air. They hurried and called the bishop to see if he had our cell number to know how to get into our house. We gave the bishop our garage code, he hurried and called his wife to get the pump, and luckily the family that saw the water has a shop vac, which sucks up the water from the floor. The water was pouring into my room through the window well.

When we got home, our wonderful friends were running around moving the furniture out of my room, wringing out towels, lifting up the carpet in my room, and sucking up the water with the shop vac. I was amazed at how much water just the cement under the carpet and padding had absorbed! (The pictures show the wet carpet resting on cans with fans underneath. I'm not sure where they put the padding, but they took it all out to dry. The fans are still running with the door shut and the window open, and I'm sleeping in the queen-size bed we have in the other part of the basement.)

Here's where the whole part about being blessed comes in—last Saturday I did a major cleaning of my room, lifting everything up off my floor and putting them on my desk and dresser. I'm known to start big projects and not finish them, so I've had stuff all over my floor for the past couple months. Ever since April I've had the contents to my 72-hour kit on the floor below my window, waiting for the moment when I would strategically squeeze everything into my backpack. Last week, I finally took the time to put it together and then moved it into the other part of our basement. My big maps had been on my floor and piles of papers and a bag of Argentina memorabilia. I am so hugely blessed that only one book and some mail and a few papers got soaked. It was amazing for how much could've happened!

And when I heard my room was filling with water, my first thought was, "I hope my LASIK receipts are okay!" Right before we left for the reunion I read a letter from my flexible spending account saying they couldn't track when I'd used my card for my LASIK eye surgery. In order to prove I used my money correctly, I need to fax them copies of my receipts or else I have to pay the amount back! So I luckily found the receipts right before we left for the reunion and was all set to fax them in, but decided to wait until we got home that night. I'd set the two receipts side by side on my bed. When I got home, they were the first things I looked for but only found one of them! So I looked and looked and then said a prayer, and thought to look under my bed again in case it'd blown off when all my furniture was quickly shoved to dry ground. The receipt was a little smooshed, but I found it!:) I was SO relieved.