Raw Sewage....

This is what Raw Sewage looks like in your house, not cool. This is just ONE picture of a thousand we took of mom and dad's basement. Imagine discovering this as your walking out of the house to go to work, no wonder mom was so upset, I would be too.

L

Cellar flood.....neat

This is a picture of the flooding in my cellar. Can you see how close it is to me buying a new furnace?? OMG, that would have been awful!! As you can also see, the water heater is under water, thank goodness nothing happened to it. The other stuff that was floating around in the 12 inches of water was nothing important...had this happened earlier in the spring, I would have lost some pretty special stuff...good thing I made JY move all of the 'important' stuff to the storage unit!!

L

Lylli.....

I don't know if you can tell, but someone likes to get her picture taken and I'll tell you I don't think it's the puppy Emily is holding :)

Hopefully, Lybbi won't eat her, I'm just sayin'.

L

It's been brought to my attention....

That I don't post near as often as I should (thanks Tana and Judy). I created this blog to give my family and friends a glimpse of the crazy life we lead and to let the family and friends that we don't see every day (or even every month) know what's been going on. I'll be the first to admit, I've been slacking on the job!! I'll try and be better, I promise. So, that said....we've been crazy doing nothing at all.

I do have an announcement to make....no, no babies on the way, well not really. In about 3 weeks we're going to get a new family member. Miss Lylli (I think this is the name we've agreed on, it changes daily) will be old enough and weaned from her mama to come and live with us. Lylli is a Papillion, and Spike (mom and dad's dog) is her dad. She was born May 30th and is the runt of the litter and she's freaking adorable!! We've been keeping it a secret from Lybbi, we don't want her to get all bent out of shape because a new puppy is coming to live with us, it's gonna be a surprise for her :) She's gonna hate it!! Look for crazy dog stories to come, it should be entertainment!!

Stay tuned for more craziness from the Young's.

Luv,
L

Happy Father's day!!

I'm a pretty lucky girl. I have a pretty cool dad. I remember growing up and just wanting to hang out with him no matter if it was planting 'trees', fishing, 4-wheeling or just sitting, I wanted to hang out with him. Even now, at 34, I want to hang out with him. Well, most of the time :) So, happy fathers day dad, I luv ya.

I also have a couple of great fathers in law. Tom, he's quiet but he would do anything for me, Jeff and the girls and has done anything including carting my butt up to the Farmer's Market. And Bruce who acts all tough but deep down, he may not want to admit that he likes me, he loves me, I know it!!

I also have a pretty great husband!! He's not my father but he is the father of our children, and he's pretty great at that job. SOOOO great that sometimes I can't tell who's the adult/parent and who's the kid. That's why I love him, even when he's throwing his own kind of fit, luv u baby.

So, to all the fathers in my life, I hope you had a great day!! Anyone can be a dad, but it takes someone special to be a Father......

Luv,
L

Random...

I heard that by Saturday, the flooding would be just inches shy of the level of the flood in 93. Crazy huh?? I got pissed because I had 12 inches of water in my cellar, kinda puts some things in perspective.

I suppose I asked for it....

So, remember how I ended my last post. You know about how I would wake up to 5 inches of water in my cellar...well I was a little short in my guess-timation. This morning started like every other weekday morning, late and so I'm in a mad rush to get out of the house....At 7:30a when I'm set to walk out the door I find mom trying to beat my door down, seriously. She busts in and says "I don't know what to do, we had a sewage back up last night during the storm". RAW SEWAGE, you know as in other peoples sh*t. So, I'm all like, NO WAY and mom loses her sh*t right there and I'm, again, like NO WAY and she says, YES F**&^% WAY!! So she tells me that they had 4 inches of sewage in the basement. And I'm thinking in my little head, OMG, the pool table, the 55 inch screen projector TV, the fantastic speakers that crank SingStar and then I think of all the other little things, gone/ruined/covered in sh*t. I just can't believe it, I can't.

So we make our way down to my cellar and the water is so high it's almost covering the 2nd step from the bottom and I just don't go any further thinking the worst. There isn't 5 inches, but 12 inches total in my cellar, 1 inch away from the bottom of my furnace and 4 inches up on my water heater. My stomach sours at the thought of having to replace even one of those big ticket items. But this I (I meant to say Jeff) can fix this, we (again, I meant Jeff) can bale or siphon this out right??

So I HAVE to go to work for a couple of hours to finish something and then I'm heading back home to 'help' out. Yeah, so 5 hours later I leave to come home and I find my wonderful husband (yes, I meant to say that) working so hard to fix our problem, um, on the couch. LOL, he worked all morning while I was at work and was taking a little 'break'. Finally, by the end of the afternoon, all of the water is out of the cellar (with the help of a borrowed sump pump from Jeff's dad). Whew, thank goodness and just in time for the next set of storms coming up.

Mom and dad, however, aren't fairing so good. They found out that the City of St. Charles isn't liable for this as was once explained to them that the City will indeed pay for this...(and the other shoe drops) mom & dad's home owners insurance may or may not cover this because they didn't add the option of sewer damage. I guess it's an option only, WTF?? I don't understand how this can happen, my parent's are good people, they don't deserve this at all.

So, there is a lot of work ahead for the Austin/Young's. I'm a pretty good supervisor, yes, I am.

Luv to you all.
L

Does anyone remember....

What it was like prior to the 40 days and 40 nights of rain we seem to be stuck in?? Because I don't. If you remember, please refresh my memory.

Last night was spent in my parent's basement from 5pm until 12am because of a tiny little tornado warning Madison county was in (the nerve). I'm terrified and fascinated all at the same time when it comes to crazy a$$ed weather. We've all seen the movie Twister (like a thousand times, it's just that good), and we were all terrified and fascinated by this movie thinking 'dam movie, that will never happen here'. Yeah, so I might have beat the kids running to mom and dad's house screaming 'save yourself, save yourself and (maybe) get out of my way'. (I made sure they made it before I shut the garage door, I'm a good mom!!). My BFF and her 3 kids headed there too as they are in the same predicament as we are, no basement, so at least we had some company. So, instead of taking a spot under the pool table (yes, I can still fit even if it makes me want to puke in my mouth at the thought of the small space), I let the kids hang out there and WENT BACK OUT SIDE where it sounded like God was throwing rocks at us. We had hail, crazy wind and all the while I'm trying to spot something, anything...Toto could have flown by and I wouldn't have seen him...I might have taken one to the noggin trying to catch a glimpse of ANYTHING.

My BFF and I waited until the FIRST storm died down and made it back to our houses just in time for storm #2 to hit. I woke up again at 3am when storm #3 hit. Needless to say, I was pretty worthless at work today. Longer story short, it's happening all over again tonight and tomorrow morning I'll wake up to 5 inches of water in my cellar instead of the 2 that are already hanging out in there...neat-o.

I will say one thing, God knows how to put on one heck of a light show!! Fantastic!!

Luv to you all,
L

Weird, the kids are bored already...

So, it's the second day of summer break and I get home to my kids lounging in the pool, lips blue and teeth chattering to find out that their bored. WHAT?? Are you kidding me? What the H are you going to do for 3 months??

Today they were sooooooo bored that they went to a movie and walked around the mall with Paige. Oh to be so bored. I told them what any loving, caring, nurturing mom would and told them to get over it. They don't even know what bored is, they have a pool (that comes up to their knees), a gigantic pool toy holder (aka the trampoline) and a basketball hoop. What more could you ask for??

I have to admit, being bored is no fun...I was so bored tonight, but not so bored that I worked on getting ready for the garage sale that is looming over me. Yeah, they don't know what bored is all about.

I have tomorrow night to get my crap together....LOL, yeah right, I work best under pressure, another Austin trait :)

L

Did you know....

That the sun in shining at 5:45am, on a Saturday?? For those of you who don't know, I'm an Austin and Austin's are nocturnal, no joke. I recently saw 5:45am when I invited myself along on a trip to the Farmer's Market downtown Des Moines with Jeff's Dad (Tom) and Step-mom (Judy). I got one kid (Emily) to come with us and one kid (Allyson) rolled over and went back to sleep w/out even opening her eyes and Jeff just kept on snoring w/out hearing any commotion at all (that is so like him). So, our ride shows up at 6:15am and we're off. This happens to be the same day as the Dam to Dam running so I was expecting a 'few' peeps to be out at the butt crack of dawn like us...yeah, my estimation was incorrect. At 6:55am, the place is already moving and I'm shocked. We were in and out ($30 lighter) in 1 hour 15 minutes, not bad. I was home reading a book on the back porch by 9am, not bad at all.

So, I'm pumped that I have the whole day ahead of me, I don't know what to do next. Do I sit here and read, do I do the laundry, do I start working on my piles for the garage sale we'll be having next week or do I actually clean the house?? About the time I'm pondering what I should do, mom peeks her head out and invites me to ride along w/ her to Missouri on a cig run, who could turn that down?? I left at 10am and was home by 1pm, the house work done, the laundry damn near done so there's nothing left for me to do but take a 3 hour nap. Oh yeah, I needed that.

Saturday night, was grilling w/ our BFF's, a mean game of Wizzard and then we hit the SingStar on PS2. We were all rocking out until 3:30am, I guess that nap did more than I needed it to :)~

So, after rolling out of bed at 11:30am on Sunday, I hit the couch and continued the snooze. Man, I'm lazy!! Jeff finally got me off the couch w/ a trip to Des Moines (w/ the promise of a Starbucks coffee in my future) to get supplies for the pool and food for the munchkins since their at home this summer with a sitter. So, what seems like $500 later we tackle setting up our little 12x12 pool in the back yard. 3 hours later, it was as good as it was going to get and COULD YOU JUST PUT WATER IN THE !@#$%#& ALREADY?? It got 1/2 filled by 12am when the water got shut off and the Young's hit the sack....

Even if you didn't want to know, this was how we spent our weekend, fun times!!

Luv to you all.
L