Water water everywhere an not a drop to drink

I have to say that I have not personally taken one photo of this flooding insanity but that's okay cause the National guard have literally taken 200 a day for the past week and a half and are offering to burn them onto discs for us if we want them. So in a couple of days I will have thousands of pictures. Brad took a couple of them late last week when he had to do a formula run to Halstad so I will share those with you.
RR tracks running along the highway. The ditch is completely full to the highway and way beyond on the other side.
A shot of the land that is usually being prepared for planting in the next month completely under water.

Will is ready to go outside today and help Daddy shovel after the 6 inches of snow we got on Sunday and Monday. He followed Brad down the sidewalk with his Will-sized shovel scooping with one hand and tossing off to the side just like Dad. Sometimes I wish that I could live with the eyes of a three year old where all I had to worry about was if the puddle I was jumping into was too deep for the boots I had on. Of course that is really never a worry for MY three year old, but you know what I mean.

Not that this is over yet, far from it, I'm afraid. But I would sincerely like to thank everyone for their kind thoughts, prayers and volunteerism over the past two weeks for my town and any of the others in the area. If nothing else, the horror, exhaustion, frustration and devastation of this time has brought around a new sense of hope to our communities. When it seems it is all about the money and who has it and who doesn't and what the president plans to do about it, people here have shown that when it comes down to it it is really all about the people. Not who you know but how much you can give even those you don't know. I am reminded how incredibly lucky I am to live where people help people, we lift each other up when the water is highest and carry on. We have a lot of work yet to do and I sincerely hope that when the waters subside we continue to support and help each other until the last bag is empty and everyone is home safe.

Random

That's the name of the game around here lately. So here are some pics of the clan and the craziness.

Will is literally following in his father's footsteps.

Will needed a sword in the car for his musketeer routine the other day so Dad gave him a pen. With the ink still in it. A few minutes later he started talking about a face and pointing at Emmy. His pencil skills aren't that great but we wondered to each other if he drew a face on her somewhere. No, it turns out that he actually drew on her face. Nothing major but I'm afraid it is a strong bit of foreshadowing of what may be in store in the years to come.

Despite the new make-up, she is still pretty darn cute. Her two top front teeth emerged this last week which was so very traumatic for everyone. We broke out the ambesol cause the teething tablets just weren't cutting it and we were up every 1.5 to 2 hours. It seemed to help and she actually slept for a few hours at a time through the night.

Brad and Will ventured out to shovel the snow on snow day #2. Will pulled lots of snow down onto the sidewalk for Dad to shovel as he climbed to survey the 4 foot drifts.A few minutes later, as Brad surveyed the street full of snow that hadn't been moved yet, our very kindly neighbor, Wayne, came over with the loader and made Will his very own hill. Will with enthralled, cheering every time the bucket would go up to dump the snow on the hill. Brad was enthralled not to have to shovel half the street to get the cars out. We brought Wayne some chocolate chip cookie bars that we baked on snow day #1 to say thank you.

Will was home with croup and a fever for a few days this week but finally felt much better Friday. So when Gram came over to have supper they went for their first walk of the spring with marching sticks and all. Will is in his ultimate environment here wading in the water. Where there is water my boy will be.

We sadly had to put our very special family member, Belle, down this week. We took her to the vet because she had been losing weight and wasn't eating or drinking. It ended up that she had some kind of cancer that was causing water in and around her lungs. She is in Pet Heaven now right near Toosk, my mom's dog who left home a few weeks back never to be seen again. Even to the end Belle loved our loving her, especially Emmy. She would sit directly in front of Emmy and let her push, pull and drag her in every direction without so much as a peep. She was a good cat and we are lonely for her. Anyways, now we have a pointless cat door, or so we thought.

And the final excitement of the month - Brad has wanted to put in another sump pump in our every wet basement all winter so the week before the flood hits Fargo he finally called Laneys to do the deed. Apparently the expectations got lost in the translation and they thought we just needed to replace an existing pump not put in a new one. They couldn't help us now but they would have time to put it in after the flood. Dandy. When Brad heard that the trepidation in their voices and that it would cost around $1000 for them to put it in he decided to give the jack hammer a whirl on his own. And, lookey there, he struck water! He started at 8:57 this morning and as of 9:43 this evening we have a new working sump pump with about a mile of piping taking all the evil out of the house. It may not be the prettiest thing you've ever seen but it works. I guess all that time spent in the Menards plumbing department was worth something after all. Good job, Sweetie! *****Brad asked me to point out that we did take a family trip to town in the middle of the day which, including eating lunch took about 5 hours out of the time in the basement. He wanted ya'll to know he wasn't working on this for 13 hours straight. *****