welcome home

We had a nice welcome home last night -- we came in to find that there had been some plumbing or pipe problems, or something, in the basement while we were away, and lots of water leakage ensued. So after putting the kids to bed, Greg and I spent almost three hours carting everything out of the basement, except for the couch, the washer and the dryer. We brought things outside to dry, found temporary storage for things that miraculously managed not to get wet, and removed three of our four area rugs, which were totally soaked and stained with moldy-smelling water.

Today we will be cleaning the basement from top to bottom -- mopping, scrubbing, drying, vacuuming. Then we need to return everything to its original place in the basement, after washing lots of things, particularly toys, that sat around in the nasty water. We have a ton of laundry to do -- all of the laundry that was already waiting to be washed in the basement, plus things that were stored and got soaked. We will need to go shopping, to invest in lots of plastic storage containers and shelving. Let me tell you, relying on cardboard boxes for storing toys and clothes is a baaaaad idea.

So much work to do... and we have to find out whether management will compensate us for anything that was ruined, since the issue was their fault. But I'm not holding my breath. And here I had all of these adorable photos from the weekend to post, but that will have to wait until all of this stupid annoying garbage is taken care of.