I never took any pictures the actual day – Sunday – only because I never dreamed this would happen AND it didn’t really get bad till dark.

This is actually on Saturday. I took this picture because during Hudson’s birthday party, I made a joke about when the party was over I was inviting everyone to go swimming in our lake. All night long, Hudson kept asking if it ‘was time to go swimming in our lake?’ I wanted a picture to document it! haha!

This is the view from our bedroom window upstairs. This is the subdivision that backs up to ours. Eventually this is all suppose to be landscaped.

We bought the biggest lot. It is huge compared to all the lots in our entire neighborhood! It was so big because of all the drainage easements on it. We have on in the back as well as the one you see above {I didn’t take any pictures of the back one!} It has never done this before! Ever! We really never get standing water in this empty area. Our property line stops about where you see the rock in the back. See it? Seriously, the water has never even gotten to it in the past and the ‘flow of water’ it has ever seen, has always drained immediately. Never standing water. We didn’t put our fence out so far to balance it out with the other side – which also has another type of easement! But we are not on top of neighbors, the fenced in part is still plenty big and we wanted to landscape down the outside of the fence.

This next shot is just directly beside our driveway. Again, it has never had standing water. And this is the ‘lake’ I was referring to! This really was crazy. It is our sink hole – not really but it does resemble one and I’ve always referred to it as one. I bet that water is about 10 feet in the center of it.

By Sunday morning, there was absolutely no sign that water was ever in the easement. Once the rain slacked off, it drained. That simple. Never was worried about flooding. And why should we be? We are not in a flood plain.

By Sunday evening, we knew something was wrong. Not only had it filled up again, but it was raging down our cul-de-sac towards us. I started sweating it about 8 pm. It was getting closer to our house on the side. And the back yard {in the fence} was already holding water. Ironically, our ship out back was the first thing to get wet.

In the end, the water was about 3 to 4 feet from the 1 side of our house you see in the above pictures. And we were just as close to it in the back as we were in the front.

Lonnie seriously had these markers all over the side and back of the yard! So those who follow me on twitter and were wondering how the heck I knew it was rising in inches – this is how.

Everyone that knows Lonnie – Does this surprise you?? It shouldn’t. On our first date, my husband told me that as a kid he wanted to be Bill Hall. That means absolutely NOTHING to most of you. But Bill Hall is now a retired local weatherman.

This is Bill

{I love these HUGE pictures! I can really get my point across! haha}

And my future husband, on our first date, tells me how he has always wanted to be just like him!

Fab-U-lous.

And I still felt God led him to me.

For marriage.

?

?

Back to my flood of 2010 . . .

my sink-hole. I’d say it was at least 12 feet deep in the center at this point.

I swear, if only I had a canoe, I would have pulled it out to float this to see where it would take me!

The fence looks like it is holding back the floods! hah!

That tree is at our property line as well.

There is the water line. It was to my knees, which is not saying much because I’m short. But it was about a foot and a half. Deep enough for my taste. Our rubber mulch looks more like pine bark chips. And it is nasti-O! Ugh! We just bought 2 tons {more} of this stuff trying to make it thicker in spots. Glad we had not picked it up and spread it yet!

Our street has dried up completely at this moment. And we have alot of city engineers walking around trying to figure out what went wrong. They must not have gotten the message that it rained a lot and hard for the past 2 days! It seems that several drainage spots “upstream” got clogged, including a creek, and it all rushed down to us.

The funniest thing was last night when the deputy sheriff showed up at our front door in a boat! I couldn’t stop laughing. It was the most backwards thing I’ve ever seen. And my kids . . . needless to say they have the same personality traits as me. Hilarious.

And no. We didn’t get in the boat.

And for all the prayers, thank you.

I’m seriously in need of prayer! The water is 8 feet from my house. Anxiety is taking over my body right now. So not expected since we are so far from any flood plains, therefor we have no flood insurance!!!

The other day, the bottom fell out of it. We even got some hail. And as soon as it blew in, it blew out! The sun was so bright on the front of our house, it was blinding. But you could still see the tail end of the storm as it was leaving at the back of our house. The first thing I thought of was a rainbow. I told the kids to look out back, surely it would appear soon.

And did it ever!

And the longer we stared at it, the brighter it got. I had never seen one so bright – EVER! And then on closer inspection, I realized that we could see the FULL rainbow!

At the most, I’ve seen about 3 quarters of a rainbow – BUT this one, was basically the whole thing! The only part we didn’t see is the very end. And that was only because the trees were in the way. In the past, rainbows just seem to fade into the sky. Not this one. It was as bright and shaped just like the ones I drew as a little girl.

And it was soooo close to our house! I’ve never seen one this close up either. The end, was in the field behind our house!

It was literally behind that row of tree and brush.

What a wonderful reminder.