A Crazy Busy Week

I am exhausted. I don't really remember the last time I was so tired. My body is tired, my brain is tired, my eyes are tired...I am tired! It has been a really busy week...and it is only Wednesday! I am helping out with Vacation Bible School at our church from 6-8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday this week. At first I wondered how I got suckered into this "job" since I willingly gave up a Benjamin free evening in exchange for spending my nights with 10 other people's children who are much older than Ben, mostly 9 year olds, but have ironicaly similar behavior! I have a new found respect for teachers. I really do enjoy my group, they are just extremely "spirited" and wear me out...much like Ben, but bigger!

My favorite part of VBS, however, is watching Ben interact with his peers. He is in the preschool group so I am only in the same room as him at the very beginning and end of the evening. I love being a fly on the wall and watching Ben and all his friends. I feel so lucky that we have found a church that really feels like home and made friends that feel like family members. I love so many of the kids in Ben's "circle" and I got emotional tonight watching them all and imaging what they would all look like and the kinds of people they would become 10 years from now.

It is not really VBS, however, that has made me so tired, but rather the sleepless night that Dean and I had on Monday night. We have had an unprecidented amount of rain fall in Indiana the past couple of weeks. There has been massive flooding throughout the state and many people displaced from their homes. On Monday night I did some work after VBS and had just gotten into bed at about 11:05 when the sky opened up and started pouring down rain and there was more thunder and lightening than I have ever seen in my life. It was a truly massive storm. At approximately 11:15 the power went out. Dean and I got up to check on the boys and I went down to check the basement. There was only about 4 inches of water at the very bottom of our sump pump. Approximately 5 minutes later Dean went down to check the basement again and there was water pouring in through the window wells and the water in the sump pump had at least doubled.

Our basement is finished, but fortunately the window wells and sump pump are on the unfinished storage side of our basement. We started moving things off the floor and brought down towels to mop up the water. After securing that area, we again checked the sump pump to find about 18 inches of water now at the bottom and it seemed to be rising rapidly. We grabbed 2 one gallon buckets and 1 two gallon bucket and a pitcher and began bailing water. We made many trips and though we didn't seem to be making much progress, at least the water wasn't rising. It really wasn't so bad carrying the water up the stairs and dumping it in the kitchen sink for the first couple of hours, but still frustrating since we had no idea when the power would come back on and IPL offerred no estimation of time. To add insult to injury it would not stop raining. I shifted my prayers from pleading for the power to return, to pleading for the rain to stop!

At about 2:00 a.m. I was getting tired and frustrated...so you can only imagine how annoyed I was by 4:00 a.m. when we were STILL bailing water. At this point we were no longer staying ahead of the water and the level had risen about 4 more inches and was getting really close to the top. At this point we started calling our family members to see if they had a generator. No one did, but Dean's sister Barb came over to try a car operated power thingy (it didn't work) and.

By the grace of God our neighbor across the street just happened to be outside at 4:45 a.m. (they were taking their son to the airport for a 6:00 a.m. flight) and they had power so Barb and Dean ended up running 6 extension cords from their house across the street and down into our basement to the sump pump. I continued bailing water while they set this up and at about 5:45 a.m. the sump pump kicked on and I nearly wept with joy! I never in my life imagined I would spend over 6.5 hours bailing water. This was not my idea of a good time, but was certainly time well spent as our basement was not flooded.

Dean and I crawled into bed with Ben (whom we had put in our bed earlier in the night after discovering that our neighbor's tree had lost 2 huge limbs right outside Ben's bedroom window) and passed out for about 45 minutes. Believe it or not, both boys slept through the storm and the commotion all night and awoke in great moods to MORE rain and storms. Our power kicked on shortly after 7:00 a.m.

We are now the proud owners of a battery operated backup sump pump so I should never have to spend another sleepless night bailing water. Thank God! Dean and I are are so sore today. Our calves and knees hurt the worst, along with our upper backs and shoulders. But we are counting our blessings and so happy that our "wounds" are nothing that a little rest can't heal. Our hearts go out to all the storm victims who faired much worse than us. We pray for some relief from Mother Nature's wrath and peace, comfort, and security for all.

Here are a couple of cute pictures of the boys...they have nothing whatsoever to do with this post, but are sweet nonetheless!