Just when you think you have it all under control...

... something is bound to come up.

We were (or actually it's more like I was) starting to feel pretty good about our BBQ hosting abilities this summer. You see, this year we finally assembled the BBQ that we bought a few years ago, and we'd been having friends and family over for a BBQ at least every second week. Last weekend we were hosting my volleyball team. I was feeling pretty good, having done some house cleanup and prep during the week, and I thought we'd have a leisurely Saturday getting ready for the event.

Well, it didn't quite turn out that way. Just after breakfast, DH headed down to the basement to take a look at something, and he came back in great panic: the basement is flooded. Now, we have gotten some water in the basement on occasion in the past. Usually, it just means that water gets in in one corner, and has to find its way to the sump, where it usually just flows out and into the ditch through the drainpipe. It's annoying, and sometimes we try to mop it up so that we don't have to wait for it all to flow away, but in general it's limited to a small corner of the unfinished part of the basement, so we're not overly worried.

But this time, it was different. The drain pipe itself was pumping water back into the basement. The water level was a few centimeters off the floor, and it was making its way into the finished part of the basement at an alarming rate. So we went to work, trying to get the water out of there, plugging the drainpipe, getting a shopvac for quicker water evacuation. Unfortunately, there is no way to get rid of the water in the basement itself, as we have nothing that would pump it out, so we had to carry all the water upstairs. Overall, we probably hauled up over 200 gallons of water. Up and down the stairs for 6 hours straight...

Then people came over, and we had a nice BBQ. The weather was beautiful, pretty much the first day this month where it hasn't rained. Bugs weren't too bad (except for the hornet that stung me twice, grumble, grumble), the sun was nice and not too hot, a great evening overall. Except when everyone left, and we went back to the basement, the water level had gone up again. So again, we trekked water upstairs, plugged the drain holes even more solidly, and convinced that we did as much as we could, went to sleep a little after midnight.

Of course, we didn't sleep all that well, worried about our precious, recently finished basement. But in the morning everything turned out to be fine, the water level had not risen again, and clearly the worst had passed. We got a sump pump, and tried to clean up some of the damage (nothing big, mostly just junk that we were keeping around that we're glad to get rid of in the end). Tonight we'll be installing the sump pump (fingers crossed), and cleaning up the rest of the damage (mostly empty cardboard boxes). We are planning to go to London (ON) for the weekend, so we need to have everything settled and cleaned up before then. If the sump pump installation goes well, it should be no problems.

So how's that for a weekend adventure? Not the kind of thing you're hoping for when barely into your second trimester, but hey, them's the breaks :)

In sad news, I just heard that FIL is back in the hospital after suffering 5 seizures again. Crossing fingers and sending positive healing thoughts!