One Year Ago - The FLOOD

*I know this is long, and totally understand if no one reads the whole thing, but it's for me...reminiscing about this awful event that happened last year. It makes for a good story :-)

It all happened on a Monday morning. We woke early (really early like 4am early) to the sound of water pumps outside of our apartment window. Tyson and I were so annoyed, because neither of us like being woke up in the middle of the night. Lexi came running into bed with us around 7:30 am, which was fine since that’s when Tyson usually got up for school. Luckily she had come in our bedroom because we had no power that morning. When Tyson got out of bed he stepped on the floor and to his surprise found that it was wet and said “Did Lexi pee on the floor???” He then took one more step and realized that...we had a flood. He went in to use the bathroom and saw that the bathroom had about an inch of water on the ground. Lexi went chasing after him and slipped as she entered the bathroom. Tyson was taking a leak and couldn’t help her and I (38 weeks pregnant) was too tired to get out of bed. She lay there crying and wet for a minute until Tyson was done. At that point we said “why didn’t they start those pumps sooner???” We talked to the maintenance guys and they said that they had things under control and there shouldn’t be any more water leaking inside the apartment.

I took Tyson to school and came back to the apartment to try to move things so that nothing would get ruined. Our neighbor across the hall was out of town and had someone house sitting for him. I met her and checked out how things were in that apartment...didn’t look good. She came over and helped me move the couch and a few things. Meanwhile, the water is getting worse. I call Tyson and tell him we need to get cinder blocks and get everything off the floor. This was at about 9:45am...by this time, water was pooling from underneath our bathtub and the carpets were considerably worse. So, I went and picked up Tyson from school. On the way, Lexi found a pen and broke it and got ink all over herself. We went and got lunch at Taco Bell and while we were there, Lexi threw up all over me. Not just a little throw up, all down the front of my sweatshirt. At this point I’m thinking that my water’s going to break or something. It was just one thing after another. When we got back, the maintenance people had ripped up a lot of our carpet and were still trying to get the water from underneath the bathtub under control. They told us that they were going to move us into another apartment in the building (next to the one we had been in). We then decided to get a uhaul and put most of our stuff into storage, since we were planning to do that anyway because we were moving to Ephrata in a month. Tyson got his buddies to come help us (which was a huge nuisance with it being the last week of school...right before finals, but so grateful they could help!!!). Kylene watched Lexi for us! We got most of our stuff out (besides kitchen stuff) and got a little bit situated in our other apartment around midnight. We were exhausted! I got into bed (we just had our mattress on the floor) and my back was throbbing! It hurt to move in any direction. I went to take a bath and could barely walk to the bathroom. The bath helped a ton though and I felt fine the next day.

The next day, Melanie and Becky came to help me get the last of the stuff out of our flooded apartment. Another long day. Tyson had his oral argument that night, so was gone all day preparing. I had a doctor’s appointment that day and I thought they were going to tell me that I was dilated to at least a 5 and that I’d worked so hard that the baby was ready to come...not the case. Nothing had changed and I was shocked! But, honestly, that would have been a horrible time to have the baby.

A week or so had passed and we (I) went and talked to the management about getting out of our lease. Since we were leaving for the summer, we were going to have to be paying rent until someone else came along to rent it, which meant taking a risk on how many people were actually looking for apartments. I went and told the lady that we were one of the apartments that had been flooded out and that I thought we deserved more than just a change in apartment. She looked at me and said “People always want more.” What?!?!? Here I am 39 weeks pregnant at this point and that’s what she said? She told me to put my feelings in writing blah blah blah. I was so mad! A few days later, we went to talk to another manager, a nicer manger, and we were later told that we could get out of our lease, that we would get our deposit back, and that we could leave whenever, no questions asked without any check out procedure. Yeah!!!

Those were the worst two days of my life, harder than giving birth. But it turned out to be a great blessing for us. We were sick of that place, sleeping on the floor, sitting in camping chairs, etc. but it happened for a reason. We were able to get out of our lease, saving us a lot of money, we got our things packed up quick (maybe a little too quick) and put into storage, so we didn’t have to worry about it after Jace was born (that would have been crazy), and it strengthened us. Tyson and I were able to discuss our options and make decisions quickly as it needed to happen. Exactly two weeks after the flood, Tyson took his first final, and the next day, Jace was born (which is another story in itself!). We put the flood behind us and looked at our beautiful new baby boy.