Basement flooding

On Sunday morning, May 18th I headed downstairs to clean out Sophi's litter box, but was surprised to find water on the floor. I called John down while I racked my brain trying to think what was leaking. I first thought it was the central air, but since we hadn't turned it on yet that was pretty impossible. Then I hoped it was the water heater because that would mean I'd get to upgrade to a tankless, but by the time that thought had come into my head John had run into the guest room. He shut off the main water to the house and figured out it was the sprinkler main by the house.

We then spent the rest of our Sunday hauling out the furniture. Unfortunately, the guest room was storing a lot of holiday decor and odds and ends that needed to go back into the unfinished closet of the craft room. My house is now cluttered with furniture and it won't be getting better any time soon.
John called his brother over to help remove the carpet and padding since it was way too heavy for me to lift up the stairs. We then sucked up the remaining lake of water on the cement with the wet vac and my little carpet cleaner.

 Then came the part I was dreading, pulling down the pine paneling that was only put up a couple years ago.

 

My heart ached pulling that down so John could cut out the wet sheet rock. 

 It was late into the afternoon when we finished and set up a fan to help dry out the room. 

John started fixing the sprinkling system the next day, but even that was a chore. The hole was 5 feet deep and 3 feet wide when he found the broken pipe. 

 By Tuesday he had it fixed and the water was turned back on for good. We then left the guest room alone for the rest of the week so it could really dry out. 

Saturday we bought carpet to replace the guest room, family room and our bedroom. Only the guest room was ruined and we really could have saved the carpet, but I needed a silver lining! 

Sunday we ran to Lowe's more times than I'd care to remember and spent way too much money. We also seemed to run every other errand known to man so we didn't really get started on the room until Monday. 

We made pretty good time and the guestroom got put back together by the end of the day. We also replaced the white casings with pine, something that we had been meaning to do for some time. 

John has the rest of the week off work, he's going to use the time working on the house. Replacing the builder grade molding in our bedroom with what we've used everywhere else, tear out carpet and finish the craft room closet. I will have to find someplace to put all the furniture while the carpet is being installed on June 7th, but I'm really looking forward to having the house back in order.

 

Early May camping at Currant Creek

I know it has been a while since I've posted, but work has gotten me swamped. I was helping get ready for a system intro at work which required so much of my time that I think the lap top glued to my legs at home.
The system was going to be launched May 5th and I knew that I wouldn't have any time off for a while so I asked John if he wanted to get away to the wilderness for a couple days for his birthday. We decided to go to Currant Creek since the camp ground wasn't scheduled to be opened until the next weekend so we were hoping for peace and quiet "primitive camping".  

We found a nice spot that I'm sure will be even more beautiful once the leaves come in. We did have to do some cleanup of deer pelts and legs so the dogs would leave it alone....they still didn't. The spot was also littered with broken bottles, beer cans, dirty diapers, ceramic plates, and carpet. I was very unhappy with my fellow man and the mess. The first rule of primitive camping is to pack out what you pack in. We had to use a whole trash bag to clean up someone else's mess, but we didn't want to leave the spot.

After setting up our spot (thanks for letting us borrow your tent, Parents!) we walked around with the dogs to let them blow off some steam. Luckily John saw the deer before I did, so we could keep the dogs far enough away to not chase them. They probably couldn't figure out why we weren't moving for so long.

Once back at our spot, John took a nap and I read my book and enjoyed the idea of not having to do anything.
Around dusk the deer starting coming out in droves, they were all over the side of the hill we were camped by. John stopped counting one group when he hit 50. A little while after that we started hearing howling in the distance, we figured they were out hunting all the deer we had been seeing.
We started a fire and roasted hot dogs and s'mores for dinner, but didn't last long. I was cold and wanted to hit the hay so we climbed into the tent around 10PM.

Enna decided to steal my seat while I was up making s'mores.

It was about 11PM when we started hearing the growling, whining and barking of a single animal and it was close to our tent. It would hang out for about 5 minutes and then we'd hear it a little further away. This went on for about an hour and we were starting to get tense. The forth go around, the animal actually pushed on the tent. I chirped our car alarm to see if we'd scare it away and by for 3 chirp it was gone and didn't come back. We weren't sure if it was a wolf, coyote or just someone's dog, but we weren't going out of the tent to find out. Luckily our dogs didn't make a peep during the whole thing, who knows if that would have helped scare the animal away or make it worse. When we got home, I did some research and I'm fairly certain that it was a coyote.

We slept soundly after that and since we had never had a positive camping trip just the two of us, we decided to stay.
The next morning we took our time making breakfast and cleaning up. After we took a little walk so the dogs could stretch their legs. I think Makoa brought us every deer leg in a 5 mile radius and Enna hunted every bird in the grass.
It was such a beautiful day in the mid 60's and I was soaking up the sunshine while we strolled.
Once back to our spot, the dogs finally settled down.

 John and I read, took naps, played mancala until we started our stew in the dutch oven for dinner. It was delicious, thanks Derek and Jonessa for the antelope meat!
We started a fire early and didn't have any coyote sightings or hearings, but the dogs did keep freaking us out by barking into the shadows.
We had no problems during the night and in the morning we used the fire to make breakfast and brew our coffee. We were in no hurry to get home so we took another stroll with the dogs before we cleaned up.

The puppies were so quiet while we cleaned up and we headed home around noon. It was such a nice camping trip for once and we're hoping to go once a month the rest of the year until the snow comes in.