Thursday, August 25, 2011

House Flood Disaster

This last Saturday night, we found a disaster going on in our house. I was at work about to come home, and Nate went downstairs at 7:30pm to feed the kitties. He was barefoot and noticed that the carpet in there was squishy and wet. "Oh Crap!" right? So he went into the utility room and noticed we were having a little flood in there. It was about 1/3rd of the room and about half an inch deep. And it was actively dripping from that little white pipe towards the ceiling that you see in the 2nd picture. This is the house pipe that goes into the main city sewer line...and it was backing up! Disgusting! So it was leaking "black water" out into our utility room...and it was soaking through the wall into the carpet in the kitty room and closet, and it was soaking up the walls into each adjacent room. MAJOR problem! So I got home as fast as I could. After 8pm, Nate started calling 24 hr Roto Rooter Plumbing services. He found one that could come about 11pm, so I went to bed and he stayed up for them.

The plumber came and opened up a big valve into the pipe, and out falls this disgusting silver metal ring (like you would put on a showerhead) that was completely compacted with black gross toilet paper. It all goes back to the "Fix N' Flippers" again. They must have knocked that ring into the pipe that had NO business being in there. And it had sharp edges on the upper portion of the ring, so for the last 2-3 years, every time toilet paper would go by there, it would shred it just a little and started compacting and corroding it little by little. Nate said it was the grossest thing he's seen in a while. The flippers just didn't give a damn that it was in there. But now it back up our sewer pipe and came out into our possessions. The plumber told Nate this was a "Category 3 Hazardous Waste" clean up and we needed to hire a professional company to come clean this up and tear down the dry wall and it would probably be $3,000. He did the temporary fix and then left and Nate went to bed.
The next morning, Nate stayed home to call companies and call our insurance USAA, while Johnathan and I went to church to get away from it all. Nate read many reviews and picked the best company with rave reviews called "Delta disaster services". They were coming around 2:30pm that day (Sunday). He called USAA and found out our deductable was $1,000, and they would pay for items that were lost.
So when the company came out, they told us that this "black water" is so nasty and hazardous, that anything porous that it touches, basically has to be thrown out immediately. It wasn't worth the effort at all to try to clean it, because it's almost impossible to get it all sanitary. So, very sadly (I almost cried), our casualties were: 1. Our Christmas Tree that we bought just last Christmas and spent A LOT of time searching for. It was in a box and the box was completely soaked. Could not salvage it. 2. Our Jungle Jumperoo for babies. It's the thing you put a older baby in to jump around and play with things to make music. That was completely soaked. 3. A second Pack N' Play that we had....soaked. 4. A pair of Nate's tennis shoes.
Then the most annoying one was...my breast pump was right on the line of if we should keep it or toss it. It was stupidly sitting on the carpeted floor in the closet in the kitty room. The carpet was damp, and the bottom of the pump was sitting on it, but it wasn't wet itself. There showed no signs that it was wet. But it is really risky because this is what you use to pump milk out and feed directly to a little baby. So could cause mastitis or disease. But the guys that worked for this company were also on the fence about it. So Nate called USAA about it and they said if it did not show any visible signs of being damaged and you could not prove it, they would not cover it. And this is a $300 pump! So we ended up deciding to keep it...clean it all over really well...and hope that we are right (that it's fine). So I took out all the stuff and soaked the bag in oxiclean for 24 hours and cleaned each part individually. We think it should be find but we had a lot of anxt about it.
So, the company put up containment plastic all over our basement (as you can see), they put fans down there and a dehumidifier to dry it up. They ripped out the dry wall and cut out half the carpet from the kitty room. That's all gone. They've come every day this week until today. It is now all dry and sprayed with cleaning fluid. Tomorrow they are coming to "seal" the foundation wood. Then on Monday, the construction consult happens and the next couple of weeks, they will be working on construction to rebuild everything. That same company does it all. It has been a HUGE headache! I'm very sad about the stuff we lost, but hopefully we will be able to replace them. And it's been scary to think we could get diseases from all of this. We've had to really try to keep Johnathan away...and we also moved all the kitty stuff upstairs so they don't go down there. The plumber will come back to really fix the pipe when it's all done. And he said that would cost about $1,700. So our total cost for this horrible problem will be $2,700. Cutting big into our savings...and we get nothing out of it (other than cleaning up something that should have never happened). We definitely could use any good thoughts or prayers from our friends and family. Thanks guys. I hope this never happens to anyone I know. -Angie Pennock






























Wednesday, August 24, 2011

I saw Josh Blue at the Zoo!

Funny Lion, sleeping like house kitties do. : )


I was able to go to Comedy Night at the Zoo with my friend Christa. Josh Blue was the comedian and as always, he was SOOOO funny. We laughed our heads off for one hour straight. Apparently he now lives in Denver and very close to the zoo (talked about walking there all the time). He's now married to a Japanese woman and has two young kids. Man that guy is funny.









Pregnant girls at work

This was Allison Carpenter's baby shower on Aug 16th (2nd girl from the right). It's her first baby.
As you can tell, there are LOTS of pregnant girls at my work right now. A couple weeks ago, there were 8 of us (out of 80)...so that means 10% of our nurses were pregnant! Crazy! But two delivered, so now there's 6. The other girl Amanda Tam actually was at the shower, but left before this picture. We're in order of gestation. I'm the only one for 2012. : )





Me and Juliane Anderson (my good friend). She's due Sept 30th (her miracle baby) and I'm due Jan 25th.

Summer Fun with Water!














Climbing

Johnathan is such a little climber. He crawled himself into his toy box. Then he started spontaneously doing hand stands on the wall. Then he was trying to crawl on Daddy doing hand stands on the wall. He's pretty fun.




















Thursday, August 11, 2011

14 3/7 Week Ultrasound for fun at work



This second one is a great view of the face.



The baby is sucking his or her thumb in this one! Wow! We might have 2 thumb suckers.

Pretty cool to see most of the baby all in one view.






Wednesday, August 10, 2011

16 weeks Pregnant!

A picture every 4 weeks continues... : )








Johnathan was trying to take a picture with his fake camera of the "real" belly.

He always says he loves my belly.



Monday, August 8, 2011

Dancing in office



Amazing day of sleeping in

Johnathan slept in SO much on Sunday morning! (The morning we were going to Pirate's Cove). We had stayed up late the night before because we were at a summer lab party for Nate's work group. So Johnathan didn't get to bed until almost 9:45pm which is late for him. And he normally wakes up between 6:30-7:15am. But this day, he slept in ALL the way until 9:15 AM!!! That is amazing! We were so happy! He needed to sleep apparently. : )

Pirate's Cove in colorado!

We had the funnest day yesterday! We did a Family Day at Pirate's Cove in Englewood, CO. (Denver area). It is such a fun waterpark! Great for toddlers and much more affordable than WaterWorld. Johnathan loved it and so did we. I think out favorite part was the lazy river.






























Spraypark and Water trumpet

This is a really fun spray park right behind the Museum of Nature and Science. Never knew about it until a couple weeks ago.



Here's an awesome bathtub trumpet that we found for his birthday. He loves it. We're gonna train him to love trumpets at an early age. : )


This is for Jan...

Jan,
Do these work for Johnathan pictures in front of clouds? Let me know if you want me to keep working on it or if I need to change something.