It's been quite a harrowing few days. Although it's been almost three weeks since I've last posted, the biggest events occurred in the last three days. It all started Monday night, when it began to rain...and rain... and rain. It rained all day Tuesday and into the night. Out in Aurora it was snowing for most of the day. We didn't get much snow in Denver, only rain.

By the time we came home from work Tuesday evening, Leah and I were both glad to be out of the miserable weather. Or so we thought. At around 6:00 that night we heard Jake crying after being downstairs in the basement. We saw his pants were soaked, and it wasn't from going potty. He walked into our newly finished downstairs bathroom and slipped in a giant puddle. It was then that we realized that water was seeping in through the walls. And it wasn't just in the bathroom, but all over! The worst was the base of the toilet and along the wall to the back of the house. Leah started getting towels out to soak it up, but it was coming in too fast. I ran to Home Depot and bought a wet/dry vacuum. By the time I got back, it was getting worse. We must have emptied over 50 GALLONS of water over the next 6-8 hours!

We realized that neither of us was going to be able to sleep Tuesday night. Who knows what we'd wind up waking up to in the morning if we just let the water leak. So we took turns running the wet-vac every 5-10 minutes around the bathroom. Unfortunately, we couldn't do anything about the carpet getting soaked, which was getting worse by the hour. I stayed up until 2:00 AM, trying to soak up water in the bathroom and back room as much as possible. Leah then got up from 2:00-3:30 AM while I tried to sleep, but the thought of a flooded basement kept me from sound sleep. We both stayed up until 4:30 AM until the water finally started slowing down, so we put as many towels as possible around the floor and slept for almost 2 hours, at which time Jake woke up.

Working the next day was a challenge. Leah stayed home and tried to suck up our waterlogged carpet, while I canceled my morning appointment, but worked the rest of the day, which was like running on fumes. Our basement is still in disarray as we attempt to salvage our carpet and pad. Not fun.

Looking back now, this has never happened in the four years we've been living here, and we can't help but think that the next time it rains for an extended period, are we going to have to go through this again? It's not often that it rains for 24 hours straight, and hopefully it won't happen again. This has been one crazy weather season, from the Christmas blizzard to mammoth rainfall. I just want our basement back, since that's where we spend most of our time.