Just call me Noah {part 1}

It's been a crazy last few months!  On April 19, 2013 a major flood hit our area.  It all started on Friday and the kids were at school.  I knew the river was higher than I'd ever seen it, but never anticipated just how it would affect our family.  While sitting in the living room, I happened to notice my neighbor talking to the mail carrier.  Then the mail truck turned around and headed back the way she came.  Odd.  So I went out to check in with my neighbor.  He said the road was flooded and asked if I needed help getting stuff out of our basement.  I told him Kyle would be home to help me after work, but thanks.  My concern grew, though, when he insisted, telling me I wouldn't have time.  Yikes! He and I worked quickly to pull everything from the basement floor up into the living room.  Then I grabbed my camera and assessed the situation. Here's what I saw.

Um...yeah. I started to freak out a little bit. I called Kyle and told him he needed to come home right away. In the meantime my sister-in-law offered to let us come spend the weekend with them until the flood waters receded, so I started throwing stuff into bags for the kids and myself.  Since I was getting more and more anxious the longer I waited, I decided to go pick Ashlyn and Maguire up early from school.  Kyle stayed back to continue moving stuff up and out of the basement.  By the time I left to head to school, the water on the other street out of the neighborhood was up to the bottom of my van.  I kept telling Kyle to hurry up or he'd get trapped and not be able to drive out of the neighborhood.  Finally, at about 6:00pm Kyle left {WAY too late in my opinion} and just barely made it out!

We enjoyed our impromptu sleepover with my brother and his family - Ashlyn and Maguire loved spending time with Ollie and Quinnie-girl :-)

Saturday morning we heard from one of our neighbors that the water rose a ton overnight and that our barn/garage was under a foot of water.  The roads were impassible without a boat.  Kyle and my brother, Nate, went over to the house to continue working on moving stuff and when they got there they realized that our chickens were trapped!  The water was actually waist-deep in the back yard and the door to the chicken coop was completely submerged, trapping the chickens up on their roosting bar.  Poor girls!  Fortunately Kyle was able to save all 7 of our little ladies and canoe them to safety.

The great chicken rescue!

Sunday was the day the river crested, and our house was surrounded by water and the basement was completely full, 1 stair step away from reaching our first floor.  We never anticipated the water getting so high and we didn't get anything off of the ledges around the basement walls, so all of my canning jars and a bunch of other stuff was floating in the nasty flood water.  Ugh! 

We weren't sure when we'd be able to get back into our house, so we packed up a bunch more stuff and headed  to Kyle's parents' house.  They had just left for Florida for a week, so it was the perfect time for us to move in and settle in for a while.  Little did we know just how long that while would be...