Flood Update

Do you think if I go outside and shout, "Stop raining" that that will help. Me neither. Which is why we ultimately decided to sandbag the house today. We didn't want to. Turns out filling hundreds of sandbags and lining them up is a lot of work. But I feel surprisingly more at peace now that it's done (and by 'done' I mean a small wall, which will have to be built up if this really turns out to be some kind of flood, but I doubt it will).

We had tons of super awesome people show up this afternoon with pretty much no notice to help us with the job. I'm so glad, because it was even bigger than we'd anticipated, but it wasn't so bad with help and friends. In fact, it was kind of fun. For the kids it was more than kind of fun. It's good to bring kids to these things. They help a little and play a lot and put things in better perspective. I mean, what could be more fun than a muddy acre of pond with swings overhanging it?

This is the pond this morning.

This is how much it'd risen by afternoon.

Does this goose know something we don't. Perhaps I should be waiting out the rain in the attic.

We had lots of help (and I'm grateful for it all), but the kids did a surprising amount of work, too.

Elizabeth's foot. She is one of the cleaner children. Do you like how she wore her pink pants and Sunday shoes out into the mud? Yeah, I like that too.

Emma is cutting 4 molars at once (she likes to do that sort of thing). She wasn't too happy the whole day. But she's still cute, so she can get away with it.

Peter was the bravest and wettest/dirtiest of all.

Look, it's a pirate ship.

And here's the finished (hopefully) job. It gives us an extra few feet and I think that should be plenty. In fact, I'm not even sure it'll get to the sandbags (I'm hoping not, honestly.) But Kip and I thought it better to be prepared than scrambling to beat the water.