A Nabor Party

On June 21^st we hosted a bridal-baby shower for two different couples.  All the guys were in the Nabor House Fraternity together at the University of Illinois and nearly 20 years since starting there their pledge class still keeps in touch and gets together once in awhile.  It really is very cool!  So on Saturday 5 of our families were able to get together to celebrate Katie and Kevin’s baby and Anna and John getting married.  It was a relaxed party with 6 small children (Ages 6 and under) running around.  Everything was going well until it started raining.  The rain itself was no big deal, the party moved indoors and continued.

The day before I had mentioned to Brad that we had some water in our basement, something I was told would never happen.  You see I once asked about if water in the basement was ever a concern and I was treated like it was the stupidest question in the world and told that our house is on a hill if we were ever to get water in the basement we would have bigger problems.  As it started to rain Brad mentioned water in the basement and I said let’s go look at it while we are thinking about it.  Everyone else was eating and we snuck into the basement to check.

We have several windows in the basement, but they are all in window wells.  One of the windows had about 1” of water in it and pressed up against the glass when we got down there.  Water was leaking in the corner of the window and making a puddle.  As we stood there laughing while we contemplated what to do and the torrential rain continued there was quickly about 6” of rain water pressed up against the window.  It looked like an aquarium!  Water was no longer just leaking out but pouring out the corner of the window.  I started moving things away from the window.  Brad ran up stairs to get something and before we knew it there were 6+ adults and a lot of children in the basement.  Everyone was quickly moving the toys back away from the window.  I ran upstairs to grab some towels and Brad was using the plastic toy tubs to open the window and let the water drain into the tubs and out of the window.  After doing that several times Brad was trying to find the tile drain to clear it to help water drain. 

At some point water started coming in the ceiling in the basement right over our desk and all our important papers.  You see we have lived in this house for almost a year, but our office never was completely unpacked and organized.  It is in the basement, rarely do we have guests down there so we just have no motivation to get it all organized.  I was regretting that as water was dripping down on the papers.  Luckily Brad’s friends were there because they were strong enough to quickly move the desks out of the way, not something I could have done!

At one point I went upstairs to check on something and I was told that water was dripping from our living room ceiling right onto the Wii.  Again, people were nice enough to just jump in and unplug the Wii and get things out of the way and get it dried up.  Good friends are priceless!  After Brad went outside in the downpour and cleared the small dam in the gutter things got better and the rain let up.  We as a group had done all we could in the basement to get all things safe and we just needed to clean up the water.  We discovered that we had two drains in the basement, both were in the furnace rooms and up a step.  Not ideal placement!

Vincent was very excited about the flood.  He was devising plans and wanting to direct people and come up with new ideas about fixing the problem.  He was hilarious.  Our friends’ daughter, Claire, is a year younger than him and they had a lot of fun discussing the whole situation amongst themselves.  Actually all three of Katie and Barney’s kids are about 1 year younger than ours and we are both due with #4 1 day apart.  It was fun to see the kids have so much fun together.  Our kids were not happy when their friends had to leave.  They all played very well together and Cecilia had fun playing with two other girls!  Joel enjoyed having a boy his own age to play with instead of following Vincent and his friends around.  It is always great when your kids get along with your friends’ kids!

After determining that the guys could handle the situation all the ladies and kids went upstairs and had cupcakes, ice cream and opened gifts.  The guys stayed in the basement and cleaned up the 100+ gallons of water and enjoyed some drinks before they came up for cupcakes and ice cream.  As inconvenient as it was to have water in our basement while we were hosting a party, it was actually great timing.  If Brad and I were home alone we would have  been trying to move everything, supervise the kids and trying to get rid of the water all by ourselves and in my current pregnant condition I couldn’t have lifted most of the buckets or moved the desk or climbed a ladder in the rain.  I am so grateful for good friends who are willing to jump in and help!