The Rains Came Down and The Floods Came UP!

After spending the entire month of December running around trying to get ready for Christmas it seems like January comes and is a little anticlimactic…yet at the same time it comes as a welcome relief because we’re all ready for things to slow down. Unfortunately, my parents didn’t get that same luxury this year. Only days after Christmas, they had an unusually heavy rainstorm in Logan and with the leaves that were backed up in the ditch in front of their house, the water backed up and came down the irrigation ditch that ran alongside the driveway next to their house. The unfortunate part was that the ditch was already full of ice and snow, so the water ended up on the driveway and with nowhere else to go, it flowed down the stairwell into the basement apartment that was right next to the driveway.

My little sister Vicki was the first one to discover the water when she got up from a nap after working all night long. She told us later that the water was flowing into the house like a river...and although my sisters in law, Jana and Shari thought she was exaggerating a little, they soon found out that she wasn’t lying. It was only after they hired an ARS crew to come and help pump out the water that they realized just how much water had come into the house. The crew filled up their 250 gallon tank that was on their truck two times!

Fortunately, for mom and dad, they had my sisters, Diane and Vicki and my sisters in law, Jana and Shari all there to help them clean up the mess…but it wasn’t something that could be done in a day! My other sister, Jan and I both wanted to be there to help, but it was snowing that same day, so we had to wait to go help them. When we finally got up there a couple of days later, our job was to go through all of our stuff that mom had been storing for us for a long time…over 15 years for me! Our husbands came along with us, thinking it was just going to be as simple as picking up a few boxes and turning around to come back home…oh, were they wrong! It took us hours to go through everything…and most of what we had to go through had been moved out to the garage...and it was only 12 degrees outside! Oh what fun we had going through those boxes! If we would have only listened to our mom…we would have never had to deal with this mess!

Mom and dad sitting in the middle of boxes of food storage and stuff from the basement

My old bedroom...the carpet is wet but the water is gone!

More than once in the past few years, mom had said she wanted us to spend an afternoon going through all of the stuff that we’d left in Logan all these years, but it was never convenient, so we never got it done. We no longer had that choice, we had to go through all of it and decide if we wanted to even bother taking it home or just throw it away. Most of the stuff had no real use anymore, but for me it was hard to throw it away. On the other hand, my little sister Jan didn’t have a problem throwing almost everything of hers away. I wasn’t sure if she was even from our same family, but I felt like I needed to take some lessons from her. I’ve often said I want to be just like her when I grow up…and maybe it’s finally time! Even though we threw a lot of stuff away, we definitely stirred up a lot of memories that day and even though we would have preferred other circumstances for cleaning out those things that were so full of recollections from our childhood, maybe it was a good thing.

As we cleaned, we definitely found some treasures. Here are just a few of them!

Jan with a "scrunchy" she found in one of her boxes...it looks more like a headband!

One of my schoolwork assignments when I was only 6 years old...it looks like I was a perfectionist even back then!

A picture of me when I was 6 years old...long before the current dress standards that I so adamantly standby now as a leader of the youth!

The total of the hospital bill when I was born...yes, it was only $116 and that included the delivery room and 3 days in the hospital including meals!

Some of my hair from a haircut when I was 3 years old...my boys think it is gross because that means it's over 40 years old! Look at those curls!

Whose poster is this? I think it's Diane's but who knows? We were both in love with Shaun Cassidy back then!

Weeks later, my parents are just barely getting things back to “normal” around their house, and as hard as it was, I’m sure they’re glad that their basement is no longer a storage facility for all of our stuff/junk!