The Flood

May 2nd. . . 6 weeks before our baby was due. It was a good day.  (It was the best of days, it was the worst of days.)  We visited our adopted Grandma that morning and on the way home we stopped to buy some cream so we could make homemade butter.  I was feeling like such a fun mom. Letting my kids make homemade butter = FUN!

We get home, have a snack and start shaking the cream.  We were almost done when Eliza says, "Mom, there's a LOT of water on the floor!"

"Great!!!"  I think. . what has Sammy spilled this time?  I turn and expect to see 2 or 3 cups of water of the floor, but instead I see GALLONS!  GALLONS! I am not kidding! GALLONS!  

The water seemed to be coming from the next room, the laundry room.  I opened the door to see water pouring out of my washer.  The floor is covered 2-3 inches deep in water. Oh dear.  I keep a lot of food storage in that room.  There were buckets of grains and beans etc. - LOTS of heavy buckets, a 20 lb. bag of rice, a box of sweet potatoes. 

I stopped the washer and called my husband in a panic.  The conversation went something like, "hey, honey ummmmmmm, we have a problem. . .the washer has been over-flowing."

"Do you need me to come home?"

I can't believe I hesitated at all before I calmly replied, "Yes, I do think it is an emergency." Why was I so calm? no idea.

I did what I had to do, and started frantically cleaning up the mess, moving heavy things that I probably shouldn't have been moving, lots of heavy things, like those buckets.

We spent the rest of the day cleaning up mess after mess related to the flood.  

Some of our grass seed had been soaked when water leaked from the laundry room into our out door storage area, so we were frantically planting grass and sucking up water from EVERYWHERE with a wet dry vac our friend let us borrow.

When I couldn't stay on my feet another minute, I grabbed a water bottles for everyone. We sat in the shade relaxing with the kids while they were putting mint leaves from our square foot gardens in the water bottles. I remember thinking that even though I was incredibly worn out, I was so happy.  Sitting outside with my family on such a beautiful day.  We were all home together, working hard together to clean up the mess and even having fun.  It sounds crazy but I distinctly remember how happy I was and didn't think it made sense under the circumstances, but I wasn't going to question it. We were happy = a perfect day.

I don't remember what we had for dinner, probably applesauce, maybe toast, doesn't matter, I was happy.

We fell asleep exhausted, I was planning on doing nothing the next day, just resting. 

But nothing had gone according to my plans that day and apparently that trend was going to continue.  And about 6:20a.m. the next morning, with the contents of the laundry room still spread over every surface of my kitchen, my water broke.