On that Friday, Ruth and I grabbed lunch and went shopping in downtown Downers Grove. She needed a few gifts for people and we thought it would be fun to check out some of the different shops in the area. She found some unique and fun gifts and was able to check everything off her list! Matt took the express train to the main street station where we were shopping and caught a ride home with us. We spent the evening hanging out at home with the girls.
The next morning, Avery woke up sick. That poor kiddo was still fighting something off from the weekend before and now she came down with a stomach bug. She laid around most of the morning/afternoon. Matt and Ruth went with Morgan to swimming lessons and out to lunch at the Harvest while Avery rested.
That afternoon around 2:30, while we were all napping/watching football, the electricity went out. Matt had ran out to the grocery store really fast and when he came back, the garage door wouldn't open. Ugh. ComEd originally said the electricity would be back on around 5:00, but then they kept revising the schedule. As the day went on and turned dark, we decided to go to Erin's house for dinner. We were hoping the electricity would be back on around 11:00pm since that was what ComEd said was going to happen. Of course, at 11:10pm, ComEd revised that again and said 3:00AM. Not good. It was pouring down rain and our back-up sump pump battery is really only good for 8 or 9 hours at the most. Considering the sump pump was running pretty much non-stop, we were lucky it lasted as long as it did. We ended up running back to Erin's house around midnight to get their back-up battery, but it had already started flooding in our basement. So, it didn't help much. So, we just waited. Every time it started raining hard again, I just cringed. Eventually around 3:30AM, the power came back on. I was laying on the floor in the girls' room and Matt was in the family room, neither of us were sleeping. I think Ruth was asleep - she loved the quiet! :)
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| Nightime by candlelight in the girls' room |
As soon as the power came on, I could hear the sump pumps kick on. Both of them were running non-stop. Matt and I went downstairs to assess the damage. We were lucky that the water was less than 2 inches deep. Any more than that, it would have hit the drywall and that would have been super bad. As it was, most of our stuff was in plastic bins and we only had really one big rug that got soaked. Surprisingly, the kids play mat area kind of floated above the water, so a lot of the toys sitting on top of that did not get wet. It could have been so much worse. It was a good excuse to get rid of stuff we don't want/need anymore.
The water drained out of the basement pretty quickly once the sump pumps started working. We went back to bed and got a couple hours sleep before the big clean up started.
On Sunday, we spent some time cleaning up the basement and moving stuff to the garage to dry. Ruth got a lot of time to play with the girls while Matt and I were busy. So, it really worked out well to have her at our house during that time.
That afternoon, the girls had a birthday party for a friend of theirs from school, Olivia. It was at Olivia's house and the girls had fun playing with someone else's toys for a few hours. I was so exhausted from not getting any sleep. I loaded up on beer and cake. Ha!
I think we are finally back to normal in the basement. It took a while to dry out the carpet and get the humidity level back down. We started out at like 80% and it was bad. Our dehumidifier has been running non-stop, along with a bunch of fans. I bleach mopped the floors and play mats and Lysol'ed everything. I just hope we don't find mold anywhere in the future.
And the first item on our shopping list... a generator.
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