the basement

So, last friday the Dirks had a semi-catastrophy, the basement flooded after a big night oh rain fall. Our power went out that night and the next morning I went down to the basement to grab some clothes and wouldn't you know it the carpet was saturated. I had to rush off to work but poor Tyler was stuck with the task of cleaning up, he shop vac'd and borrowed huge fans from the neighbors and put them in the basement with high hopes that the area would dry out in a short while. Well, to make a long story short, it would not dry out, so we called a plumber who in turn switched the sump pump to "on" in the crawl space, which allowed the water to finally drain. I'm still not quite sure what a sump pump does but I am pretty sure it should be on at all times, and now we know. So, in the week following the carpet had to be ripped up because it was ruined and the area had to be dehumidified professionally for several days (it was pretty smelly before this). We are just glad this happened now and not with a new baby in the house. A few other positives are that our plumber had been to our home before in the 60's and knew the area well. He showed us the old gardner's bathroom that is quite antique (and still flushes when the lid is pushed down) in the crawl space. Tyler took some footage of this, he was quite intrigued by it all. And, the plumber told us that Billy Graham used to live a few houses down from us on the corner, which I thought was a neat fact. So, everything is now back in order and on track for the arrival of our new family member to be born any day now! We can't wait!