Everything was going well, supper was almost done. Then we would have cake to celebrate my sweet 16 birthday. It was raining and one could barely see out the windows. I was video recording the rain poring down outside not knowing what disaster awaited me in the future.     

    I hurried in to the kitchen and continued to set the table for dinner, when there is a scream of terror coming from the basement. It was Joseph and he was yelling “the bathroom is flooded!” In no less than a minute Landon and I were down scooping gallon buckets out of the sump-pump and dumping them outside through the garage steps. The basement was being flooded again. The sump-pump could not keep up with the rain that we were getting. I hustled into my room to look for water and the carpet was floating by the window. I began to throw towels on the wet carpet, but with every towel I threw they became saturated. I gave up.

     I started to throw everything I could into the nearest box only stopping to comfort the traumatized Dominic who was most upset. He was very concerned that we were all going to die. I told him the rain was going to stop and the water was only going to get an inch high, showing him with my fingers how big that was. Then he started to calm down. Landon was calling me back to help him with the rising water in the sump room so I told Dominic to go back upstairs to wait where he would not be in the way. But that just made him more upset that I was not coming with him. He said, “But I’m scared!” Then to the rescue came Sarah who had a headache at the time so she could not help carry water. She took his hand and led him up the stairs along with Claire.

     Quickly I went back to shoveling water with Landon. At around 11pm(about three hrs after Joseph screamed) we had probably taken 30 gal of water out of the sum-pump. “Happy flood day to you,” Landon said. I had to laugh about that for a while. For the next two hours we used the shop-vac hose to suck water out of the carpet which was not very effective.  There was just too much water to keep up. Dad came home with a second smaller vac to help. At 1:30am we decided we would have to pull the carpet up in the morning. This was a very distressing thought for me. The entire time I was scooping water a flash back was playing in my head when  five years ago, we flooded for the first time. Every detail was replayed in my head like it was presently happening.

That will be the most memorable birthday ever.

To be continued…