At 3:30 this morning I woke up to Hubs basically jumping half out of bed whisper shouting CRAP! He woke up to a flash of lightening. No, hubs is not afraid of thunderstorms like you might be thinking. When he was only semiconscious he realized that the power was out.
We have lived in our house for almost 4 and a half years. We love our house! Yes, we are trying to sell it, yes we are out growing it, but we LOVE it. It has never given us too many problems. Sure, it's old, so there are problems right there. We needed a new furnace right after the boys were born, we've done a lot of updating, we've had to have the plumber out here a few times. Nothing too big. Well the furnace was big, but it comes with the territory of being a home owner.
When Hurricane Irene hit, our basement decided to suck up all the water that she brought. Our basement had never ever leaked prior to this. Actually hubs and I had mentioned some time ago, I wonder if the sump pump even works, in the last 4 years it has never kicked on (it never needed to).
Our power went out during the Hurricane. It was only out for about 8 hours. We were so lucky compared to some other friends who didn't have power for over a week. BUT when the power was out the basement swallowed 3 feet of water. Hubs never even thought to go look down there because like I said, the basement has never even been damp before. For some reason (wifey told him to...I don't go down there yuck!) he decided to go take a look and just make sure it was still dry. Dry it WAS NOT. 3 feet! Our brand (basically) brand new furnace was half way under water. Thankfully that's all we have down there. Well, that and my brand new freezer.
Since then every time it rains there has been a little stream of water running in the basement. We really need the water level to go down.
Two weeks (or has it been longer now) later we are still living in a house with no hot water. Hubs has been taking cold showers every other morning before work. I have been boiling water to bring to the bath tub and mix it with the cold water for my self a couple times a week and if I have to look presentable I have just stuck my head in the cold water to wash my hair. Shh, we've only given the babes 1 bath since because it's just a pain to carry the pots up and down the stairs. Yes I know, now you realize how gross my family is :)
The plumber who installed our furnace said that the parts should be here soon. We will hopefully have hot water SOON.
Back to hubs yelling CRAP! After he wiped the crusties from his eyes he ran down to the basement to see what was going on. 6 inches of water.
Our furnace, with the exposed box, waiting for it's new parts. It hadn't gone all the way under water again... yet. 
He came back up stairs and said that he was going to haul buckets of water and for me to just sleep. What a guy :)
Of course I got up and helped him. We hauled buckets for about and hour. He carried two 5 gallon buckets and I carried one (maybe) 2 gallon bucket. He stayed steady for the entire hour, me on the other hand had to take a seat once or twice. I know I'm a big wimp. I said to him during our haul that I bet he wished he was married to a big butch chick right now, he laughed and said NO, I wish I was married to a man right now.
Obviously the two in the back were the ones he was hauling and that's my little one up front. 
I took this of hubs during one of my breaks. After hauling for an hour I had a brilliant idea. I asked hubs if we could plug the sump pump into the mini van. The van has a 2 prong outlet. The sump pump is a 3 prong and the extension cord is a three prong. BUT lucky for us we lived in a very old (house) apartment when we first got married and had NO three prong outlets in the house. We have lots of 3 to 2 prong adapters sitting around. Hubs said, you know it's pretty dumb to put a 3 prong into a 2 prong, but people do it all the time. It's worth a shot.
FAIL! The sump pump just tripped the power box in the car.
Back to hauling buckets. After hauling for about another 30 minutes or so hubs was done. (Oh I never really got back into it after the first hour). I've posted before that hubs had knee surgery (3 actually). His knee was starting to really bother him and he was beginning to worry that it might give out while he climbed the stairs hauling the 5 gallon buckets and just didn't see the point anymore. The water was coming in faster than we (he) could haul.
We decided to give up. I mean at least the furnace hadn't been fixed yet.
By the time we gave up this where the water level was at. Not quiet half way up hubs shin. We cleaned up the kitchen a little bit before going to bed. Dried up all the water and blew out the candles that were lighting our path from the basement door to the kitchen door. Just when we were finishing up and about to walk up stairs the power came back on. Praise the Lord! We looked at each other and gave a little giggle. I ran half way down the basement stairs and said, HUBS? Why isn't the pump going. Opps, he never plugged it back in after trying to plug it into the car. Could you imagine...if we went to bed before the power turned on and we forgot to plug the pump back in....AHHHH
Well it's 4:33pm and we still have an inch of moving water in our basement. It keeps pouring in. The sump pump keeps doing it's job. The water level really really needs to go down! I have LOADS and LOADS of laundry to do, that I'm terrified to do. I don't want to add more water to our yard. AND we would both really really like to take a hot shower...some time soon!!!
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