Ike got us!

For post #200 I have decided to finally sit down and tell you about our weekend.

Friday we had a Pflederer dinner saying goodbye to Josh and Brin's family. They were leaving Monday morning for St Louis. It was nice to see everyone - though much of the evening we watched Ike coverage. What a terrible mess!!

Saturday we made it to Stephen's cross country meet - he did great! Then we all (Tom and Connie were staying with us, along w/ Josh and Brin that night and Rachel and Adam were in town) went out to eat. We had a relaxing evening and stayed up late talking a bit (better than watching Ohio State get trounced!!) I, as I often do when it is raining, checked the breaker for the outside sump pit and put some laundry up on the freezer. Mind you, we have never had more than a trickle in from the basement door when the drain at the bottom of the steps outside is slow (see sewer fiascoe 2007).

That is until Sunday. I got up, read some internet news as usual, and looked outside to see it raining hard. I wondered how long it had done so. I thought, after reading about flooding in the area, that I might check downstairs. At the bottom of the steps I heard the sump pump in the basement running. I also heard water rushing in. Turns out that we had 2-3" of water in the basement. I woke Sonya, checked the breaker again, and then tried to figure out what was happening.



The rest of the day was a blur of cleaning, pumping, church, pumping, and cleaning! After working all day we were able to:

• Run an extension cord to the outside pump - the wire running to it never did work. Once it ran - it ran hard the rest of the day. The pit water level was over 5' higher than normal. Once we got it down, the water stopped in the basement... It had to be removed and re-started several times during the day because of debris in the pit (again - sewer fiasco reference)
• Re-run inside pump line - It seems that the inside pit expelled to the septic tank - which was back filled last year (ah yes - fiasco reference again) and water was bubbling out of the ground! It is now temporarily run out to the back yard.
• Keep the water level going down! Hope we saved the sewer from more problems. At one point the level of the sewer was rising up the clean out - but the whole town was a mess.
• Say goodbye to J and B - they decided to leave Sunday night with the water/sewer issues.

Many thanks go to Tom, Connie and Stephen for staying back from church to work. Thanks also to Josh and Brin for the additional support. It would've been really bad without help. We actually feel blessed because all appliances were saved, most things were in Rubbermaid, the water was clear as can be rushing in, and we do not really miss most of the things that we lost to the water. The neighbors had varying degrees of issues - the worst being the neighbor across the street having 5 feet of water in their basement! UGH!!! Later that evening one neighbor said his rain gauge read 7 3/4 inches over the span from Friday - Sunday!

Sonya has worked hard to get everything washed, the basement is just a little musty smelling, and things are getting back to normal. God is faithful!

-Dave

After a week

Seven days into September, how are we doing with 30 days of nothing?
Here are some of our goals:

To eat frugally. We are choosing to eat of our excess. I'm not so much talking about how I always have several bags of flour & sugar, etc, but more like if we have lots of produce in the garden (we do), we eat it & find new ways to serve it. If we have had several cans of tuna in the cabinet for a year (we most likely have), then we figure out how to help us all like it & we eat it. We spent $100 at the grocery store on the first day of September. We planned about 10 dinners with that using several odd things that had been sitting around a while. Frankly I'm not sure how far that will go, but we will try to last as long as we can.

To live a day without electricity. Our kids think this sounds like fun, but I'm not sure how long that will last. Dave says we will of course not unplug the frig & freezer so it doesn't really count...but whatever. We would like to go through the process of thinking of all the things we take for granted just because we have electricity consistently. We also discussed going a week with just 8 hours of electricity, because recently we heard a missionary say that is how they live.

To identify with families that live in poverty. That seems almost like a joke. I admit that we cannot really do so. But we are praying for our own awareness of those who do without. We are trying to help our kids talk through questions that are difficult but eye-opening. What would it be like to only eat rice & beans? How would that taste day after day? Could we still grasp on to joy? We hope to get ahold of the book Hungry Planet a book that documents what 30 families from around the world eat in a week, as well as how much they spend on their food. Another book to request from the library would be Material World, a book by the same author, subtitled "A Global Family Portrait". Each family displays their belongings for a photo and their lives are described by the authors who lived with each family for a week. Such good stuff for us rich Americans.

To buy nothing extra. Well, I either messed up that one, or I changed the rules on myself three days in. I simply chose to ignore this the day I went out to lunch & shopping with my dear sister-in-law home on furlough from Brasil...the day was just too precious to me to not enjoy it completely. I bought (& thoroughly enjoyed) a yummy lunch at Panera. I also bought some ...well... unmentionables. But I feel I must mention them because to be honest I could have done without.
So we'll change that to: To buy nothing extra except for that one day.

I think we may have a couple more goals but truthfully, just now my brain is mushy. So perhaps later.

Who's Your Daddy?

We have had some interesting experiences the last couple of weeks. One of the struggles some of our children have been having has been the confusion between roles in the family. Many people seem to hold the belief that anyone can boss those younger than him/her. One child in particular has been struggling - so he has contributed the following song, for your enjoyment:

(To Be Sung to Steven Curtis Chapman's God is God)

Dad is dad and I am not
I can only see a part of the man he is making
Dad is dad and I am boy
So I'll never understand it all,
for only dad is dad

I think pretty soon here some verses will be coming as well (depends on when he gets busted again!)

-Dave