Sunday, April 12, 2009

Easter 2009 in Smithfield

Easter in Smithfield was exciting. The fun started Saturday morning. Smithfield City did an Easter egg hunt at Mack Park a few blocks from our house. It was more of a candy hunt, but that is what the kids wanted for anyways. I am still amazed at how much candy was strewn across the lawn at the park. I would guess there were 200 kids there. Noah and Grace probably had less than average and they still came home with more candy than they needed. After Mack Park, we went to the store to grab some things for dinner. The grocery store was also having an Easter celebration. More candy for the kids. More sugar highs.

Next on the agenda was building a sandbox. Brent and Nedra came up and we started clearing out a spot in the lawn. Noah was ecstatic to go to the landscaping supply place and pickup the sand. We got to talk about the skid-steer that loaded the sand. He thought the name was silly, and thought the reason behind the name was even funnier. After we got home, I learned that while the tires on the truck are good enough to pass state inspections, they aren't good enough to drive on wet grass. It didn't make Heather's day to see me ripping up the grass in the yard.

When we got back, we finished digging the hole, and building the wooden frame. We were about to start unloading the sand when Heather came and told me the happy news of the night. There was ~2 inches of water in the three bedrooms in the basement. There were 4 of us that spent ~2.5 hours with wet-dry vacs sucking up water. I have no idea how much water we got out, my best guess is around 60-70 gallons. We finally gave up and called in the big guns. The Alpine guys ripped out all of the carpet pads, did their own extractions (getting who knows how many more gallons of water) and set out fans and a de-humidifier.

After looking around at things, it turns out that I caused the flooding. As a part of the Spring preparations, I turned the sprinkler valve back on. The guy we bought the house from showed me the valve out front, but everything else was under snow. We never opened up the sprinkler control boxes and I didn't see that he had a drain valve installed there. In case anyone cares, you need to close the drain valve (in both boxes, front and back), before you turn on the main sprinkler valve out front, or life gets exciting. Luckily we caught it within 6-8 hours of turning the water on. We rarely go into the basement and it could easily have been days before we caught it.

Today has been a lot better. The kids actually slept in. We got ready and headed to church. After church, we spent the afternoon just relaxing. We took a nice walk, and the kids played in the sand box, and most of us took naps (Noah is too big for naps...) All in all, it was a very eventful Easter weekend, but pretty nice.

Here are some pictures of the happenings at our house this weekend.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Sounds like fun! What cute kids!

I can't remember if Heather said you guys have the Netflix box. But if you do, you should look up Mighty Machines and watch the tractors one with Noah. I think they have an episode with a skid steer.

Matt said...

Thanks for the suggestion. We added all of the Mighty Machine shows to Netflix, and it has become the instant favorite at our house. Noah appreciates it the most I think. :)