Update from Iowa

I know that it's been forever since I last updated my blog! Whew! Yucky basements take a long time to overcome. We aren't finished yet.

Iowa did surpass the flood of '93 this year, with the river levels being higher, and with much more damage statewide. Cedar Rapids was the worst, I think. Maybe there were other places worse, but it was 7-8 feet deep there, and basically the majority of the city was under water. Liz Gardner sent me pictures of Alliant Energy, where the water was at least 7 feet deep inside the building! The tornados were devastating as well. One hit Parkersburg, and another hit over by Nebraska, killing some boy scouts that were camping there. Iowa is a mess. Des Moines survived better than many cities because they had the money to prepare after the flood of '93. They raised the levees and put in flood gates that withstood much of what '08 brought. Water works kept running the entire time. In '93, the city was without water for 11 days! We never lost power or water, which was a huge blessing!

Saturday and Sunday mornings, the basement was finally dry, and we have not had rain all week, so we are attempting to fix our problems and put the basement back together. We had to empty the two worst rooms in the basement, and now we have to put in a sump pump.

I have to say that our problems have been irritating, but certainly nothing compared to what some have had to reckon with. We have had no sewer problems, so the water we are dumping is just run-off. We were also able to keep up with it. Even though we needed to "scoop" the basement every 4-6 hours, we could get the level back down to the floor again.

We were also able to pull up the floor in the craft room (which is now in the garage), and we should be able to put it back down when the sump pump is in. The other room - the play room, was where we lost the carpet, and I am thinking that the rest of the basement just needs to have the carpet totally removed. The question is what to replace it with that is CHEAP! We are looking into some creative ideas!

The best news of the day, of course, is that Adrian and Susan had their little son, Hans, early this morning. Everyone is healthy and the birth went well. Hans was 6 lb 10 oz and 21 inches long. We are hoping to find pictures on their blog soon!

All of the kids have jobs now, except Aleya, who just gets to play with her friend Rachel all summer long!

We are still busy trying to clean up the basement, and work on church stuff - Tom is teaching Sunday school, the kids have youth group tonight, and we have ladies' Bible study tomorrow night. The Lord is good. We are thankful for rather minimal damage compared to some!