Sump Pumps, Urgent Care and McDonald's Play Place

A few housekeeping notes before we get started: (mostly written on Sunday, finished and posted on Tuesday morning)

1. Happy 4th Birthday, Lincoln! You will get a proper post after your party tomorrow! At least, you should :)

2. I am having a bad house day. And a bad yard day. Everything is a disaster and I feel like it will never be put back together again! Ok, I feel slightly better by saying that. Now tomorrow I will work on it, inbetween the 40 million other things I need to be doing tomorrow.
---

This weekend was supposed to be Lincoln's fabulous birthday weekend/staycation. We had big and fun plans- and we were hoping to slip some yard work in too! But we have had tornados and thunderstorms and rain all weekend, and so it turned out to be rather less fabulous than the plan.

Lincoln didn't seem to mind too much, although he is disappointed that we were unable to go to the zoo today.

But we were grateful that we hadn't left for the zoo when the tornado sirens went off. Honestly, hunkering down at a zoo in some dank tornado shelter with all my children could have been the death of me.



Instead we went down to the basement where we were faced with a new problem. Water. a puddle along one well, some dampness along another. We have a poured concrete foundation and in the 7 years we have lived in this house we have never had the slightest hint of dampness in the basement. Now, there was standing water in our backyard and in the rocks around our house, but still- seeing water oozing in along the concrete floor was strange. Thankfully when we finished the room downstairs we didn't lay carpet!



The next thing we noticed was that the sump pump hole was full of water and the sump pump wasn't running. Not that we have ever seen the sump pump run. Ever. Noah did some troubleshooting with that, but still it wouldn't run.



Our handy friend suggested Noah go by a new one at Fleet Farm and install it. So he did. It was awesome. He just went to Fleet Farm, came home and installed it and it is now functioning perfectly. Quick project, little drama. (I am kind of proud of him! :)



That situation being taken care of, we moved on to the next. Roman had been outside playing in the puddles and he came in, slipped on the kitchen floor and came chin down on the table. The gash in his chin was pretty wide, so it was off to urgent care next.

Thankfully, the PA suggested that we do steri-strips instead of stitches. He said if it was on the face, he would do stitches, but because it was in a more hidden location he felt even if there was a little more scarring it wouldn't matter as much. He said he would do stitches if I wanted them. I didn't want them, and neither did Roman, so about 3 minutes later his "stickers" were in place and we were off.

We got home and decided to go out to eat for Lincoln's birthday. McDonald's play place was the location of choice (besides, I had coupons!).

Disgusting.

Everytime I go there I swear I will never go again, but then some little sweet boy's birthday comes around and they ask, and we go.

We are 36 hours past that germ fest and no one is vomiting or sneezing yet...maybe we escaped unscathed? Not sure yet...I will give it until hour 48 before I will no longer blame McDonalds for any sickness that befalls us.

Birthday party is now complete as well, and it is time to do some yardwork before the next downpour. *sigh*