The Messy Times

I've started three different posts in the past two weeks, and none of them have made their way to publications. Hopefully this one will be different.

We've had a bit of a mess lately. Almost three weeks ago Scott and I came home on a Monday after work to find water dripping out of our circuit breaker box. Surely this is never a good thing to see. Scott did some investigation that included a crawl to the opposite end of the crawl space access door, and found there was a PVC pipe that was spraying water all over. An hour later, a plumber had come out a fixed the problem, but let us know there was a huge mess, and it had been spraying for a long time. At least a month or two.

Long story short, we had a mold mediation company come and rip out all of our flooring in the kitchen, including the sub floor. They took out and replaced a few floor joists, and cleaned up the remaining wood, painted it all down with a special miro-ban material, and installed a new sub floor. Our cabinets, appliances, and counter all had to be removed as well, leaving our kitchen (That we'd just remodeled 5/2010) looking like a construction zone.

After almost two weeks in a hotel, we're now back in our house. We have our cabinets installed again, with a temporary counter top and running water in our sink. Our flooring won't be done for another week or so, and our appliances are still sitting in our dining room, which leaves our dining room table in our living room, and all the boxes from the cabinets and pantry lining the walls downstairs.

But the entire thing hasn't been so bad. When we were in a hotel, our friend and neighbor who works at the Hilton in downtown Columbia gave us the presidential suite at a rate that was well within the insurance company's guidelines for reimbursement. Emily thought she was Eloise. We were so thankful. It was like a really bad situation turned in to something Emily won't ever forget.

And the first weekend we were out of the house, we decided that since we had to be out of house and eating out anyway, why not take a road trip and see the beautiful Tennessee smokey mountains? We made the most of it, and had a great time.

So right now, I sit in my overly-cluttered living room, watching the Gamecocks play some football. (They're winning right now, by the way.) I really have nothing to complain about. This too will pass. Chances are we will love our new kitchen and flooring downstairs much more than the floor we installed just a little over a year ago. Everybody is healthy, and nobody got sick because of the mold, thank goodness. We are back to sleeping in our own beds, and I'm planning on trying out a few new crock pot recipes next week.

When the "normal" of life gets interrupted by a mess, I realize just how lucky we are. We've had so many little "messes"- things that we didn't expect to happen, that just sort of rocked our lives for a moment... twins (more than one baby at a time, seriously?), Emily being in the NICU (we expected with twins, but surely didn't expect it from our first little girl) moving away just a few short months after Em was born, and other little messes that we've dealt with along the way. And the "messy time" will come again. I just hope that between now and then that I will remember to be thankful, and to not take the little things for granted.