The Day We Almost Floated Away!!!!!

I love the rain, I love absolutely everything about it. I especially love falling asleep to the sound of rain. When it rains at night I generally sleep a lot deeper than I do otherwise  so this past Monday morning when the pounding of the pouring rain woke me up every half hour or so from about 2 AM on, I was a little surprised. I finally gave up on sleep when I got a text from my mom at about 4:30 warning all of us to be really careful because of the crazy storm outside. 

Many school districts closed for the day, but ours stayed open, and I had to watch Kimber's kids that morning so we got ready, zipped everything up in my back , and waited for Kimber to call and say she was here so I could zip my phone safely in its little waterproof spot in my backpack, turn my jeans into flood pants and make a run for it!  

The second we were outside my flip flops started slipping, and my phone started ringing. I didn't dare take it out though. In the roughly 30 seconds it took to get from our front door to the edge of the parking lot we got COMPLETELY DRENCHED my phone rang twice, a weather warning alarm went off, and lightning flashed all around us!  I'm not gona lie, it was slightly terrifying. :). 

We were expecting to jump right into Kimber's waiting car, but it wasn't there!  Kenzie dissolved into tears as I hearded the kids to the nearest front porch. A minute or so later it pulled  up to the curb and we ran for it like our lives depended on it. 

Once safely inside Kimber's car I answered my phone when it rang for the third time. It was my mom telling me not to even attempt  to take the kids to school because it was too dangerous. I  promised her I would keep them home. I knew that with her job she was seeing EXACTLY what was going on all over the city, and she knew what she was talking about. I would have also had to have walked them to school so that made my decision even easier. 

My parking lot was compleetely flooded, and to say that we had a scary ride to Kimber's house is a huge understatement!  But luckily Kimber has a hugevSUV so we really had no trouble at all. 

When we pulled into Kimber's driveway we took a deep breath, jumped out  and ran to the house. Kimber grabbed Cash, and Ellie, who was hysterically sobbing threw herself into my waiting arms. We hurried through the rain to join the line at the front door behind Kimber who was frantically trying to unlock the door. 

This all took place in about 5 minutes but it seriously felt like hours !

When we finally got inside, we were hit with a blast of cold air because Kimber keeps her house just slightly above freezing. :). Once the air was turned up, and the fans were turned off Kimber was very excited to show me her homemade  rain shelter that she had made over her stroller when she thought we would be walking. :)

Then it was time to take off all non essential clothing and start the process of drying off. 

Unfortunately through all of this Kyle's  backpack had been partially unzipped. It was the one time that I was happy that've had forgotten his Library books at home. 

We kept  the door , and blinds open all day   It was so fun to watch the rain !  

http://youtu.be/WtqpyYC9wNM unfortunately (for the sake of this video) Kimber's street drains really well, so this video doesn't even BEGIN to illustrate the storm!  But I can tell you that it rained atleast this hard or harder for EIGHT HOURS NON STOP!!!

We watched the news ALL DAY. the storm wasn't just here, it was EVERYWHERE!  

I was very worried about my house flooding because flooding seamed to be the theme of the day, and there are two retention basins very close to my house.  

I walked home 5 hours after the rain stopped. This is the retention basin between my house and the parking lot

 

And this is my back yard, AND it was draining really fast!  

If it was this full after 5 hours of draining, how full was it while it was raining?!

Luckily my house was dry, and the school excused all absences for the day. So all was well despite the factvthat we had just blown all previous rain records out of the water!  We live in a place where we are lucky if we get between 2?and 3  inches of rain a year, and we got 5 and 1/4 inches in less than a day!  There's inky one city that got a little bit more than we did. 

Here are some pictures that illustrate just how much rain we got. 

This is a freeway

This is a neighborhood pretty close to me. More than 100 famalies were evacuated. 

This the view from a news helicopter. 

This is inside a church. 

Apparently that's a road. :)

This was happening all over the place!  I'm told there was a sail boat at the park in our neighborhood. :)

So that was our experience on the day that the weather lady called "thevwettest day in the  history of ever". :)((