A Very Wet July

(Here's a picture of only a small portion of our basement that flooded. It gives you an idea of how much water there was. The red door in the right corner is where our well is that overflowed. We are hoping to put a sump pump in there to prevent this from happening again. )

I see that another month has flown by without a post. I must say that July has been very busy and not how I pictured it turning out. Ryan returned from his first SERVE project on July 3 and we spent a quiet week together with sick kids and doing a lot of projects around the house.
The second week I headed back up to Tami's in Duluth to spend time with my mom who had flown out. We had a great week all together just hanging out at the lake. I took my mom back that Friday to spend another week together in Sioux Falls. It is always WONDERFUL to have my mom here as she spoils us all and is such a big help. We definitely ate well and had tons of fun entertaining her! Ryan headed to another SERVE project and it was such a blessing to have my mom here to help. Unfortunately she had to leave that Thursday for the GEMS convention in Minneapolis. That night we received 6 inches of rain. I went downstairs and saw that our entire family room had water in it. Thankfully their were some great church folks who came over to help me pull up the carpet and clean up the water. It was a huge job and I was so thankful for the help I got. Once again, Ryan's gone and disaster strikes! I was rather frustrated! Anyway, Ryan returned on Saturday night and we left Sunday morning for Prinsburg to spend time with his sister and family who were there from Houston.
We enjoyed 4 days together catching up and even took a pontoon out one day on the lake. The kids had a great time, but we were ready to get home and find some normalcy after a busy summer and knowing we had a basement that needed a lot of TLC. We returned home Wed., and the next afternoon we spent pulling up laminate floor in the basement that had water under it. We put our carpet back down temporarily since it had dried and moved furniture back in so we could do some other cleaning. Well, that night we got another 6 inches of rain! That is one foot in 1 week! This time our entire basement from one side of the house to the other was flooded. We spent all day Friday (almost 12 hours) hauling our basement items into the garage, pulling carpet up and laying it outside, and sucking up water. What a huge frustration. This area has seen so much rain it is ridiculous! Thankfully we don't have it has bad as some who's entire basements have flooded all the way to the top basement steps. We are now without a basement and since it is so humid, the kids have been riding scooter and pushing their mowers around in our indoor playground! At least there's a bright side to it all.

Needless to say, July has been one big frustration and a ton of work. I'm ready to move to a high rise apartment in Arizona where the rain doesn't fall. I will try to post pictures of the month later this week, but wanted to catch you all up on what's been happening. Please pray that the rain stays away for a few weeks so that we can dry out and put our basement back together.