{Thursday Night 12/10/15} When it rains it floods....

What a day. Seriously.

It started out great, I’ve started teaching kid cooking classes once in a while and today I had one with a homeschooling group. I love teaching kids to cook (as long as they aren’t my own…that’s not entirely true it’s more like as long as they aren’t Charlotte….) so I am LOVING these classes.

I had a sweet girl up the street babysit Trever for me and Charlotte went to her friends after preschool so I didn’t have to worry about them while I was teaching. After Charlotte and the boys left for school, I was getting everything set up and as you can tell Trever was very helpful, sorry bud you have a few more years before you get to use the big knives.

The kids had fun and were especially happy that they got to take home everything they made. English Toffee, Caramels, and two kinds of fudge.

At this point in the day I was feeling on top of the world, awesome, if you will. Not only had I taught six kids how to make different types of candy, I had cleaned most of the house and put in two loads of laundry before the cooking class kids even arrived at my house.

After the students left, I ran to pick up Trever and Charlotte, came home put them down for naps, made myself lunch, watched M*A*S*H while I ate it, took care of a few e-mails and trolled Facebook. I occasionally thought, “I should go move the 2 loads that were in the washers over to the dryers,” but I didn’t want to risk waking up the sleeping children so I deemed it best to stay in my recliner and chill.

Before I knew it, Trever was awake, and since it was a nice day, and he was already awake, I decided we should walk to the school to pick up the boys today. (Usually I have to wake the two littles up just in time to jump in the van and get there as the kids are about to come out.) Today, I still had to wake up Charlotte, who insists on changing into her nightgown for naps. It was warm, but not that warm, so I put some leggings on underneath her nightgown, some socks on her cute toes, wrapped her in her blanket (all while she was half asleep) and carried her out to the stroller.

When the school kids came out they each had a flyer for their parents. Thatcher gave me mine and this is what it said.

I immediately knew who had called and complained. Yesterday, when I was pulling up to the school I was trying to snag a spot that was just the length of my car and put me pretty close to blocking a driveway….but not blocking it, (if that makes sense) No part of my vehicle was crossing over the driveway, but, it may have only been an inch or two off. A man was behind me as I was maneuvering this parking space. He gave me a very dirty look and did some hand pointing, “this is my driveway” kinda thing as I was finishing parking.

This is what I was thinking as he was shaking his head and pointing at me, “Wow, that is cool sir, I have a driveway too, and not for nothing, if cars being close to your driveway twice a day bothers you, you might want to reconsider buying a house so close to the elementary…I’m just saying”

I think it’s safe to say I’m the reason those notes came out today….is it bad that I kind of want to totally block his driveway tomorrow?

Thatcher wrangled himself a playdate with one of our friends up the street as we were visiting with them before leaving the school. The condition was that he had to get his homework done super fast when he got home and then he could ride his bike up there.

Conner practically ran home and got there way before us. When we finally arrived we were welcomed home by a boy (without a shirt on) holding a nerf gun in our faces right when we walked in the door. He thought it was hilarious, so did I, but for totally different reasons. Rambo to the rescue.

When I asked him where his shirt was, he just kind of shrugged and mumbled something about it being in his bedroom. “Oh, did it get dirty?” He turned and gave me a “Mom, stop teasing me.” kind of smile.

After Thatcher finished his homework (in record time, I might add) and headed to his play date, I decided it was high time for me to go downstairs and move the clothes to the dryers.

That’s when I saw it.

Standing water in the basement.

It took my brain a minute to register what my eyes were seeing. “Crap, the sink the washer drains into must have been clogged.”

That’s when it all came back to me.

Earlier in the morning when I was being super productive and putting loads of laundry in before my cooking class started, Trever was down there helping me and he was tossing around a tennis ball. I wasn’t paying particular attention to where the tennis ball was landing.

After I went back upstairs, I had the thought that I should probably go and make sure the tennis ball didn’t land in the sink (one of the washers drains into the utility sink.) I brushed it off thinking, “Nah, I’m sure it’s fine, even if it is in the sink, the tennis ball should float.”

And with that I left to take Trever to the babysitters.

That was at about 9:30 and I didn’t step foot back in the basement until almost 4:30…that’s along time to not know your basement is partially flooded.

The suction of the water going down the drain, sucked the tennis ball into the drain and lodged it there.

LUCKILY a lot of the water drained toward the sub pump. The part that still had standing water came with in a centimeter of hitting one of the big rugs we have down there. I was so grateful and surprised when I walked over to touch the rug that it wasn’t wet at all.

I still didn’t quite no where to start with the standing water so I grabbed my phone to call Sim, I sat on the top of the stair as I was talking to him and would you believe that somehow just by shifting my hiney a quarter of an inch I snagged my favorite pair of jeans on the thing that connects the linoleum from the kitchen to the carpet on the stairs. “What? Dang it! These are my favorite pants.” that really confused Sim who still thought we were talking about the water in the basement. I mean, water in the basement is one thing, but the ruin of a favorite pair of jeans, nice jeans, is quite another!

But, hold it! My streak of bad luck was not quite over. I asked Conner to bring me the iPad he was using and wouldn’t you know he somehow bumped into the wall really hard as he was walking down the hallway and the iPad went flying, falling to it’s death. Mind you, all of these three things happened within about a 10 minute time frame. Literally, 10 minutes. At that point I decided the best thing for me to do was to go sit down and put up my white flag for the day.

Sim got home, took care of stuff in the basement and I took a break from my sitting with my white flag to make a quick dinner of Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup. While I was cooking, Sim asked me where Thatcher was. I forgot Sim didn’t know he had gone to play at a friends, so I told him and he so kindly reminded me that Thatcher had basketball practice in less then 30 minutes.

I jumped on my bike and pedaled faster then a speeding bullet to go get Thatcher at his friends. We raced back home and he managed to eat a quick bowl of soup before he and Dad left for practice.

P.S. When I got back from grabbing Thatch at his friends Sim showed me that one of my favorite measuring cups had broken while I was gone. All it did was fallout of the cupboard, a lower cupboard for that matter and it broke. Sad. One more thing to chalk up to the curse “Driveway Man” obviously put on me yesterday.

After dinner Conner worked on dishes while I let Charlotte and Trever have a bubble bath (I bribed Charlotte with bubbles in the bath tonight so she would stop crying about not being able to go with daddy to practice…she doesn’t get it that dad is the coach and can’t watch her.)

There were a lot of pots and pans tonight from my cooking class so I told Conner I would do those. As you can see I’m not the only person who wanted to take care of washing the pots and pans. This is what having too much help looks like.

After we got the kids to bed I ran to Rite-aid, it’s just right down the street, to get a treat, which I felt like I really deserved tonight, and I ran into the mother of one of the girls in my cooking class this morning. I talked to her for a minute and then went about my business, when I got back in my car I saw my reflection in the rear view mirror and realized the bobby pin I had holding some of my hair back in the front all day had done that crazy thing, where it gets bumped and basically stands up straight (with your hair) …I’m pretty sure it happened when I layed down by Charlotte for a minute tonight. I was so embarrassed.