How the Summer Began

With a flood. Nine inches of rain in 24 hours. The entire downtown area simply became part of Triplett Creek. Water was over the 100-year-flood line. That's our house on the right BEFORE it continued to rain for the next 10 hours.

Our driveway the morning after... just like a muddy creek bed.
The steps from the garage into the kitchen. The garage is the absolute lowest part of our house so it had the most water in it.

The back of the house (our bedroom.) If you look closely, you can see the waterline

The fence around our yard, choked with leaves

Here's a big, gross pile of insulation, carpet and who-knows-what that friends helped to pull out of our house. They had the whole thing stripped in less than 48 hours. We've got some seriously good friends.

It took a while to clean & dry everything out. While this was going on, the kids and I went to Mom & Dad's to finish out the school year.

Thankfully, we had time before we evacuated to put things up, friends and family to help us out with lodging, and lots of help putting things back together. And I have to give a shout out to FEMA - they came through and fast. But I don't think I would choose to go through it again...