What Just Happened?

On March 6th, A week and a half after our false alarm trip to the hospital (which turned into a spontaneous date night…not a bad outcome)…we returned to the hospital.  14 hours later, at 1:11am (March 7th), Ella Antonia dos Remedios was born (7lbs, 9ozs).  The active labor went incredibly well, four pushes and she was out.  Both Momma and Ella are doing great!

We had promised Maria that she would be the first visitor to see Ella…here’s a video of them meeting for the first time:

We had to stay another night, because Ella was born so early on the 7th…but the next day we were ready to head home. Here’s a video of our arrival home, and THE Lucy meeting her new little sister:

Everyone is doing well. Pictures of the big day can be found on the web at: http://photo.tomdos.com/ella_antonia

A couple weeks ago I was giving Maria a bath, and Sarah was doing laundry.  I got Maria out of the tub, got her into her pajamas and read a few stories to her before handing her over to Sarah before she went to sleep.  Just a typical Monday, nothing unusual…until I went downstairs to find water on our hardwood floors…and more water flowing out of our toilet.  It took a second to even understand what was happening, but then we jumped into action.  In response to my yell of terror, Sarah started unloading our entire linen closet of anything that resembled a towel.  We did our best to dry the floor and the toilet seemed to stop pumping out water.  After the floors were dried, and we had a moment to think, I called a plumber to see if they could come out and help us with our issue.  They knew what the issue was right away; the line from the house to the main sewer line had become clogged so when we ran water down the drain (like Maria’s bath water and the laundry water) it had no where to go, so it came back out of the lowest point in our house; the downstairs toilet.

The next day, the plumber was able to find the issue and were able to repair it for us.  Problem solved.  Now to deal with the flooring.  It didn’t seem too bad, some of it was buckled, nothing a little sanding and refinishing couldn’t fix I thought.  Just to be sure, I called in a claim to Safeco, just so we’d be on record with the damage.  Safeco’s adjuster insisted on having ServePro come out right away to check on the floor to make sure everything had dried out properly and to check on the damage to the floor.  We were glad they came as the damage was far greater then we expected.  Some of our carpet was wet, there was moisture in the drywall and water still under the hardwoods.  This was going to be a big project to fix.  ServePro came back out the next day, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and started the demo work on the floor and drywall so they could get everything as dry as possible.

After everything was done, this is what we were left with;

Foyer…with stylish “dehumidifier” –

Kitchen…facing family room –

Kitchen Dining Area facing bathroom and hall –

Family room…with another dehumidifier –

Pantry –

Downstairs Bathroom –

The fans and dehumidifiers left on Saturday…so now, at least, we can hear ourselves think.

While this is causing a bit of chaos, we look at the silver lining;  Our hardwood floors needed to be refinished and we’re going to end up with all new hardwoods…and much of the downstairs is going to be repainted as well!  And so far, everyone from ServePro, Safeco and our contractor have been great.  Things are moving pretty quickly…but even with that, the best case scenario is that our house is back to as good as new right before Christmas.  Another challenge that we’re facing is if we want to stay in the house while the construction is going on.  Safeco has offered to put us up in an extended stay hotel while the construction is going on.  Not too thrilled with the idea of living in a hotel for 3 – 4 weeks…but everyone from the adjuster to the contractor suggested that we wouldn’t want to be living in an active construction site with all the sub-contractors coming and going in our house.  We’ll have to figure that one out.

So…with all of this, we’re hoping to be back in our house by Christmas.  Will keep the blog updated as we see progress.  Tomorrow we pick out hardwoods and carpet…exciting!

Sarah, Maria and Grandma went to the Woodland Park Zoo for a morning visit with the animals.  When they got there, they somehow figured out a way to join a group that was feeding the giraffes (one of Maria’s favorite animals).