A series of unfortunate events

I feel like I shouldn’t even be allowed to talk about my misfortunes considering all that’s going on in Japan. But throughout everything that’s happened to us in the past week, we’ve tried to see the positives. Our glass is half full! (Even if the other half did spill all over our basement…)

First event: Coming home from church the day after daylight savings time. We had to drive separately to church that day and pulled into the garage at the same time. Derrick needed help setting the clock in my car so I quick turned off the car hopped out and changed it before getting the kids out.

The next day we were about to go to the store and I couldn’t find my keys. Of course, they were in the ignition. Turned “ON”. Not running the engine, but just “on”, you know? Battery completely dead. DEAD. Derrick gets home and we jump it and it starts right up. I decided to go shopping after the kids are in bed, but once I tried to start the car it wouldn’t start again. It wouldn’t even jump. So we let the two cars sit connected for awhile and then it magically started. I was so relieved….I didn’t want to have to go buy a new battery! Positives: brushed up on our jumping skills, located the anti-theft radio code.

Second event: This past Saturday night our friends the Spencer’s and Ryan were over to watch the BYU/Gonzaga game. I decided we should get some Chili’s chips and salsa so I ordered some to go and then Jess and I went to pick them up. Her car was parked in our driveway, but on the opposite side of my car and, you guessed it, I backed up into her. I felt like a complete schmuck. Of course we’ll pay for it, and they were super nice about it, but I still felt like a big horse’s ass. I HATE doing stupid stuff. Positives: it’s just a car, nobody was hurt, we saw the Supermoon on the way to Chili’s, BYU won, despite all the swearing I was doing in my head.

Third event: We had some really warm temps last week in the 50’s, which had melted almost all of the snow. Sunday we had a huge rain/thunderstorm. Both of those combined make for a LOT of water hanging around. We had been checking the sump pump all day and it seemed to be doing fine. Monday morning as Derrick is getting ready to leave for work I take Summer downstairs to watch TV and as I stepped onto the floor….SQUISH. I ran upstairs and flagged Derrick down before he could leave and we got to work cleaning up the 1/4” or so of water throughout our basement. One call to our insurance and an adjuster was in our home within the hour, and an hour after that Servpro was there to take care of everything. They packed up our stuff and moved it upstairs to the living room, some to the craft room, and some behind the bar. A few hours later there were huge dehumidifiers and air movers everywhere and our carpet was floating. It was our first time dealing with our insurance company, Erie Insurance, for a claim and they so far have been fabulous. (Which is good considering I recommend them to people all the time! So cheap!) Anyway, I’m so grateful for insurance, and especially grateful for the backup sewer/pump clause we added!

See the wet footprints?

It has been a challenging week living in our home. The only places to sit are at our kitchen and dining room tables. Neither of which are very comfortable for long periods of time. There is nowhere for Summer to play, and she can only handle watching movies on the laptop at the kitchen table for so long. Plus the fact that the weather has been downright CRAPPY for the past 2 days makes everything worse. I want my house back! Luckily we have friends that let us crash at their place for a bit here and there to break up our stir-crazy days. And honestly, and somewhat embarrassingly, not having a TV is driving me crazy. Summer misses her Sesame Street. I am missing Idol, Survivor, and Martha. Luckily most of what we watch is online, but not right away. I hate waiting. It’s probably all for the best though, as I was supposed to make some cookies for an Eagle Scout Court of Honor that was this evening. I spent the evenings baking and decorating instead! Quite relaxing, and yet one more thing I’ve found myself becoming obsessed with. Positives: we didn’t lose anything valuable, I’ve been able to reorganize a lot of stuff I’ve been meaning to organize, I realized I will never have to purchase a gift bag for the rest of my life, I have that many.

My sweet cookies. One scout kid told me they were the best sugar cookie he’d ever eaten, because it was so soft. I give credit to the Lion House recipe, but I’m sure all the humidity in my house didn’t hurt either. ;)

And even though these two can drive me crazy sometimes, today at dinner they totally melted my partially cranky heart today. Hannah was eating and Summer was making her laugh by pretending to sneeze. Hannah was absolutely cracking up. She never laughs like that for me. I loved watching the two of them together and it made my heart happy to know they’ll always have each other.

So they say bad things happen in 3’s.Well, we’ve had our 3, thank you. We’ll take our share of 3 good things now!