Leaves, babies, drywall, family, and the newspaper...

My week has been an interesting one. First of all, it's been a bit tough. I've had a major sick stomach and the doctor thinks that the antibiotics I took for my sinuses have caused all the good bacteria to be killed the some bad bacteria to have taken over. I'm being tested and will find out the results in a few days. I've had no energy to accomplish anything, but I did have fun taking photos of the kids playing in the leaves.

On Monday, I watched Amber's kids for a while. They wanted to go out and play in the leaves. The photos turned out fun. I liked one of Jaden and thought it looked like something that they print in the newspaper so I sent it to the Post Register. I didn't think any more about it....until today.




On Wednesday, I watched Heather's girls for a while, so we headed out to the leaf patch again. Then on Friday, we had Jade play. It was fun watching all of them enjoy the fall experience.

Besides that, we've had the restoration company working on putting new drywall in the basement. Hopefully we can paint this week. It will be nice to get it all fixed.

Last night we had a fun time. Barbara and Rebekah are here visiting, and we had a family dinner with them. Kathy came up and all our kids, except for the Vests were here.

First Annual French Family Halloween Party

Heather and Beau invited all of us to a Halloween Party at their home. We had a blast. I'm sure it will become a family tradition. They sure put on a great party with costumes, decorations, great food, fun games, a treasure hunt for the kids.... It was perfect.

In attendance were a princess, two cowboys, Tony Stewart, a monkey, a strawberry, Juan Valdez, the Easter Bunny, two Bonneville Basketball players, Daisy the dog, Handy Manny, Go Diego Go, and Dora the Explorer. Diego won the prize for the best costume, which was designed by yours truly....!! Diego and Dora had a surprise for the monkey, strawberry, cowboys, princess, and Tony Stewart in the magic backpack and rescue bag. A ghost left a treat for the kids in the clothes dryer of all places!! I can't wait to see what happens next year.

I think that Beau's family has activities like this and the traditions are spilling over into our family, so thank you Hall family for being so great... I know you read these Margaret.

Lakefront Property

Jenny called me the other day and said, "I hear you got lakefront property." I guess that is a good way to put it. On Thursday, when I got off work I was excited and looking forward to a nice quiet conference weekend. On Friday morning I had plans to go to Rexburg with the girls to see Melissa and buy some food storage at Broulim's case goods sale. I got my Broulim's list together and went downstairs to the storage room for a final check to make sure I didn't already have enough of the items I had selected.

As I left the storage room I noticed a wet spot on the carpet in the family room. I thought, "Oh no, Zoey has gone potty in the house." I walked to inspect the spot and my feet sloshed. I realized that the entire carpet was soaked. I went back to the old Toy Room, which is now just additional storage and opened the door. There was about 1" of water on the floor. I checked out Melissa's room. It was soaked as well. So about 800 square feet of our basement was full of water. Needless to say, my quiet, restful weekend plans were gone.

I tried to call Greg, but no answer. I knew how to turn off the water in the house. I did that and then started moving stuff into the dry area of the house. It was too late to call the insurance company. They were closed for the day. Besides that, for some reason I thought that homeowners insurance didn't cover for this type of water damage.

When Greg got home, I broke him the bad news. We immediately got to work on vacuuming up water. Beau and Heather came by to show us their new car and Beau helped us vaccum as well. We took many, many shop vacs full of water out of that basement.

After we started vacuuming, we realized that there was still a lot of water coming in. So we figured that the water break was between the street and our house, not inside the house or the water faucets on the outside. Greg got that shut off and that shortly stopped the water flow.

The next morning I called the insurance and they said that as long as the break was on our property they would pay for cleanup and restoration. They suggested that I call Servicemaster which I immediately did.

Servicemaster has been great to work with. Right now we have 20 large fans and a big dehumidifier in the basement. The carpet pads have all been thrown away and sheetrock has been removed from the wet walls. We are in for quite a bit of work to get this back where it was before the flood.

Greg has almost got the leak fixed. We need one more part from the plumbing supply store which he will get in the morning. Then we can fill back in the huge hole that he dug. I think he did have fun with the backhoe!!

What a weekend. But it will all turn out good. It could have been much worse. I don't go into the basement that often and this could have been undiscovered for days. Also, if it would have happened in the winter, that would be terrible. So we are counting our blessings and are praying that the insurance comes through. I'm sure our bill from Servicemaster will be very large. The guy yesterday said that he thinks the rental on each fan is $70 a day and we have 20 of them. I'm impressed with the scientific nature of their work. They monitor the moisture level in a whole bunch of spots. They have very expensive digital equipment that records everything. Right now our basement is 87 degrees with 35% humidity. (The guy just came and measured everything and told us the current situation.) Except for one little spot everything should be dry by tomorrow morning and they will remove the equipment.