The Flood; Ghetto Slip and Slide; Fortunately Speaking....

Wow it's been awhile. Summer at home is kicking me in the bum bum, to use Jason's words. By the end of the day, all I really want to do is nothing. So nothing is what I do :) Happily - or unhappily? - William spurred me along this weekend to get some things in writing, so here goes....

What do you get when you combine a 7 year old boy who won't do anything you ask, this orange ball, and a sink?

A lot of water everywhere, that's what. Saturday night Matt and I had plans to meet friends for dinner nearby at 6:30. While I made dinner for the kids, Matt had sent William up to get changed out of the swimsuit he'd been wearing since the meet that morning. I was vaguely aware that he was fiddling around with the orange bouncy ball that'd been sitting in the foyer all day, but didn't think anything of it. I put dinner on the table, called William down from upstairs, and turned everyone over to Matt while I got ready.

While drying my hair, I heard Matt - over the hair dryer, mind you - yelling at William, "do you have ANY idea what kind of mess you've made??!!!??" uh oh. 

While William was supposed to be changing out of his swimsuit and coming back downstairs, he'd decided it was a good idea to stop up the sink in his bathroom & turn the water on. And leave the water on while heading downstairs for dinner. Oh, and leave that orange ball in the sink, where it floated over to the overflow drain and completely blocked it. Matt discovered this while the kids were eating dinner and he heard a sound that shouldn't have been there, namely water dripping from the foyer ceiling.....

Sarah and Jason happily posing while I document :)

William's bathroom is directly over the foyer you see above. William had flooded the floor of his bathroom, and water was dripping from the column and the casing over the opening; we have popped nails in the trim work, and this lovely piece of drywall tape that will now need to be repaired....

On the opposite side, we also had water dripping from the corner bead on this seam, which you'll see in the next pic has now separated from the drywall & will also need to be repaired...

After using almost every spare towel in the house to sop up the water - which had also run down the inside of the walls down to the basement - I finished getting ready, and off we went to meet our friends for dinner - albeit 30 minutes late. William did NOT get to stay up and watch a movie with the other kids, and he is not allowed to play any video games for a month. Funny, Matt came up while I was finishing drying my hair and commented exactly what I had just been thinking - this really wasn't too bad of an incident - thank God we were home to discover it - and I'm sure it won't be the last, where William is concerned :)

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In a never-ending quest to get the kids outside having fun, Matt set up a big home-made slip-and-slide on Sunday! This was really just a test to see if it would work, and we've since found out lots of other people have done this too. He bought 3 9x12 foot 3 mil plastic sheets from Lowes & staked them down on the hill in our backyard, and then set the sprinkler running on it. Evie and William had a BLAST! Sarah liked it too, but I didn't get the camera out before she took off for inside - hose water is cold, after all. Anyway - after proving it works, we've ordered a 10x100 6 mil sheet from Amazon, which will eliminate the seams that kept separating every 2 minutes as the kids went sliding down, and also give a nice run-off area at the end so you don't get dumped into the grass like Evie did. I have to say, Matt really is Fun Dad :)

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One night this week Matt brought Chinese food home for dinner, and I snagged one of the two fortune cookies in the bag. Do you think it means something extra special if you get 3 of the same fortune in one cookie? I'm really hoping so, as this was a good one......