Beautiful Disaster

We were welcomed home to Illinois by a huge ice storm! Everything was covered in ice. It really is beautiful to see every branch of a tree covered in ice. Unfortunately, those ice covered branches get very heavy and tend to break off and knock over power lines, causing the city to lose power, which leads to our sump pump to stop working, and ends up with our basement flooding :(

I was trying to recover from our vacation today by tackling loads of laundry. When our power went out I knew that my plans for the day had been ruined, so I laid down by the fire to catch up on some z's...which a mother should never do as something bad always happens! A few minutes after laying down Dax and Ellie come running up the stairs from the basement yelling that there is a pond in our basement!!! I ran downstairs to find squishy carpet and ventured father in to the corner where the sump pump is to become ankle deep in water. I went next door to our neighbor Melody, who luckily was smart enough to install a full house generator after the tornado. She helped me round up extension cords and we plugged the generator into her house. Ben was able to come home from work early and he sucked up the water and got some guys from the ward to help him lift the carpet up to dry. The power didn't come back on until the middle of the night so the kids and I had a campout by the fireplace while Ben and the guys worked on the basement.

It was a crazy day!!