I really could have used a dryer this week...

We still haven't gotten our broken washer and dryer replaced yet. They said it would be delivered by the 1st. That's tomorrow. I'm REALLY hoping they actually stick to what they said this time. (Doubt it's gonna happen though.) ANYWAY... I really could have used a working dryer. On Thursday all heck broke loose in my flat. Mostly because the hose on the water heater in the office broke loose!! There was water everywhere. I was VERY lucky that my steward, Grace, and a maintenance guy were already back there when it happened. In the short time that it took the maintenance guy to turn the water off the office and my bedroom were flooded. If it had happened while we were sleeping or on vacation, it would have been a complete disaster!!

This is the hallway in my flat, specifically the back half of my flat. My bedroom is on the left and there are 2 smaller bedrooms on the right. The front small bedroom we use for the office and back one is guest/storage.


There was water all the way to my bed in our bedroom.


There was enough water that they were scooping it up with dustpans and pouring it into buckets to dump down the drain. They were also using the sheets Grace had just taken off the bed to mop up the water. (Luckily it was clean water, as clean as you can get here, and it was the hose feeding the water heater so it wasn't hot.)

But what worried me the most was all the water in the office.


We pulled Roy's computer up off the floor out of the water. (It was on at the time.) We also quickly pulled the plugs out of the wall, but it did no good. The UPS took over and everything was still getting power.


And of course the UPS was on the floor between the 2 desks. I had to pull the desks apart enough that I could lean in and hold the power button on the UPS to turn it off. What I didn't notice at the time was this.


This is a splice in the cord that runs from the UPS to the power strip that everything plugs into. IT WAS IN THE WATER!! The entire UPS could have discharged into the water on the floor if it had shorted out. We were VERY lucky that it didn't happen.

This is the offending water heater.


The space beneath the water heater is about 6 inches deep... it was full of water AND my flat was flooded. They had to scoop the water out of the hole with a cup and then we had to mop the rest out. Now we have a fan blowing in there to dry it out. (I really hope that it didn't leak into the flat below ours... sorry if it did!!)


Anyway, we found out from the maintenance manager that the flexible hose they used to hook up all the water heaters and toilets is "substandard". The fitting on ours had completely rusted through and the hose broke loose. (The building isn't quite a year old!!) So we asked him what the plan was to fix them since they know about it. And he said "We will replace them as they fail." I'm really glad Roy was there. (I had called him as soon as it happened and he came straight home from work.) I was FLOORED!! I didn't know how to respond to that answer. We were standing in water hoping our computer wasn't ruined and he had the nerve to say, we will replace them when this happens again. Roy immediately told him that was unacceptable and that they needed to schedule replacing every single piece of flexible hose in our flat because we were not going to do this again. (Isn't he a wonderful hubby.)

Once it seemed that things were under control as far as cleaning up the water and getting all the electronics where they could dry out, Roy went back to work. The maintenance guys were still working on getting the water heater repaired though. For some reason, they decided they needed to completely disconnect the water heater and empty its contents in the sink in the bathroom. That normally wouldn't be a problem, but the guy didn't check to see if the power was off to the water heater first. IT WASN'T. When he put his screwdriver to the screw to remove the power... well you can guess what happened. He was standing on a wet floor... He was very VERY lucky that he didn't die. He did however get a big shock and scared the crap out of all of us. There was a huge flash (lit up the whole closet.) He dropped his screwdriver and jumped/flew out of the closet. He was ok, no permanent injury. That was when he decided to make sure the power was off. This whole incident scared the heck out of me. I am deathly afraid of electricity. I don't even like to hook up the jumper cables to jump a car. Scares me terribly. So I was REALLY shook up when that happened. Even dreamed about it that night. Ugh...

But it seems everything is ok now. The water is all cleaned up. The closet is drying out, slowly. All the flexible hose got replaced on Saturday. And it seems that everything that got wet, dried out ok. We were VERY lucky this week. Just thinking about everything that "COULD" have gone wrong with this adventure, makes me want some tomato soup or some mac and cheese!! Anyway, as I said... I really could have used a dryer!! Wet towels... rugs... sheets.... Maybe we'll get it tomorrow. Maybe.

And finally.... the water park!

Saturday we went to Sun 'n Fun in Ponca City because Brandi had to go for her ASL class. They were having a deaf community fun day there and she was required to attend. She said usually there are a ton of people at these functions, but she thinks no one planned on it because of the rain. There were MAYBE 5 deaf people there. But we had a great time anyway! I was finally able to use my great new camera to its full extent!! Who else would be crazy enough to take their digital camera to a water park for all these great action shots!!

Underwater in the Lazy River.
Nate and Brandi coming off the mat ride. And by the way they almost ran over the two other little girls in the water. The girls had slid off their mat and were crawling back up mid slide to get back on it when Nate and Brandi rounded the corner and almost killed them!! Luckily all was well in the end.
This is a great shot!! This is a great big bucket of water that fills up slowly and then dumps MASSIVE amounts of water on anyone standing below. You can just see the water starting to pour out in this shot. It was perfect timing!!
And then, of course, the water logged aftermath. It is INTENSE. But you can tell by the look on Kit's face, WAY FUN!!
Nate really wins the prize for best splashes. He was also the most fun to double up on rides with!! You would go SUPA-FAST!!
I love the fact that this camera takes underwater pictures!! Sorry Brandi, it was just way to funny!!

The best though was being able to take pictures while I was on the slides!! Check out these action shots!! LOL




It was a GREAT FUN day, and I didn't even get sunburned!!

Here's another picture of the flooding

When I was in Bartlesville I was AMAZED at how high the water got. The flooding there was as bad as the big flood back in the 80's. This road was totally underwater the beginning of the week. By friday it had drained enough that we could drive down it. But you can see the dirty line in the trees where the water was.


That was at least 3-4 feet over the road. Crazy talk. Crazy talk.

I always wanted an indoor swimming pool!!

Just not really this way!


Last night mom opened the door to the basement and found that we have about 2 feet of water in the basement. Today has been the 20th straight day of rain. It seems to be flooding everywhere. I have never seen this much rain in Oklahoma before. Right now the Caney River is about 8 feet above flood stage. And it is still supposed to rise a little more before it crests today. Hopefully the rain will stop for a little while so that it can start to go down. I am worried about friends in Bartlesville. At 21 feet there will be major flooding there, and currently the river is at 20.8 feet. This is just crazy!

Rainy season has come to Oklahoma!!

I thought I was going to leave the rain in Nigeria when I went home for vacation. BOY WAS I WRONG!! Oklahoma is having it's own monsoon season! Today was the 17th consecutive day of rain. They are breaking records for rain here. I had to take some pictures of the flooding in areas since my husband is posting pics of Nigeria rain. We were heading over to look at the new church building, when we came across a road block. We looked past it and the water didn't look like it was crossing the road. So we scooted the blocks over a bit and drove around. Then we topped the hill and saw this.


There has been SO MUCH rain. And it is raining like it is Nigeria. You either get long steady showers or these small violent rains pop up and dump buckets of rain for about 10 minutes then they are gone. It's crazy. While we were sitting taking these pics, the SUV that was behind us decided to get brave and cross this water!! I was so worried that they weren't going to make it. The water was all the way up to their floor boards.


Lucky for them they actually made it across. Had the water been any deeper, they would have been stranded. This was mom's favorite part of the view. Anyone want to by some water front property.

Do not try and adjust your TV sets...

The water in this picture is the correct color. I still don't take baths here much yet. Mostly because I can't get past the color of a full tub of water. That is the color you get straight out of the tap. No filthy bodies have sat in that tub yet! This is why we don't drink the water out of the sink. We don't even use it to brush our teeth. But, however, we shower in it daily. Hmmmmm... there's logic in there somewhere...