Cleaning Up

Massive amounts of rain here the past couple days. I went down to the basement this morning and pulled the mats up and black, stinky gunk was revealed. I kept pulling mats up and the water and wetness kept appearing. Luckily, we didn't flood and there was no active flow. It either came up so slow that the ball drain didn't stop it or so fast that it couldn't keep up. The kids helped pick all the toys up and pile stuff on couches and counters. I cleaned the black gunk off me and then took Ellie over to North for camp. Flooded streets and sidewalks on the way there.
Nick and I came back here and he played upstairs while I worked in the basement. I got all effected mats up, washed, and stored. I washed down the floor. I set up all the fans to start drying the floor. The basement stunk - still does. Maybe my nose got too much of a dose today because I notice the smell everywhere I go. Nick helped me harvest some lettuce in the garden. We had to drain some of our pots that were retaining rain water. We had some jalapeno peppers and a strawberry, too. We took them over to Mom's house. Matteo was over there and I think it was nice for Nick to have some one on one time with him. Nick asked Mom to cut the lone strawberry so we could all taste it, Mom did. Nick and Teo played with trains and sat net to each other eating M&Ms.
We came home and started purging the basement. I told the kids this morning that this has happened too many times in too short of a period. I asked them if we could make some decisions about some of the toys in the basement. After Ellie and Rob came home from camp we had lunch and began the process. I was duly impressed with their willingness to donate their toys. Ellie decided she was pretty much done with Barbie dolls, Nick decided he was done with the pirate ship and smaller toys. All in all, I think we had 6-7 bags of toys and games to donate. We were able to recycle/reclaim more than 10 plastic bins. It looks great down there. Since it wasn't a pool day, we continued. Ellie organized her craft drawers. We were able to give Nick a drawer for his projects.
Rob and I did a major organizational purge of all our paper files. Ellie opened envelopes and helped out, too. We had a garbage bag filled with paperwork for Rob to shred at work. I did a final vacuum and we headed upstairs. We are supposed to get more rain over the next few days so we didn't put the mats back together.
Ellie and I finished another book. We thought about it, we have read 6 books in the 3 weeks she has been out of school - impressive. Mom and Dad came over for dinner. We had veggie burgers, Michigan asparagus and peppers, a fruit salad, salad, and potato pancakes. Dad played with Nick and Mom, Ellie and I played Family Feud.
Monday was Ellie's first day of Trashy Fashion at North. They use recycled materials to design clothing. They have been encourages to enter the fashion show in the fall. Ellie is so very excited about this class. Nick and I dropped Ellie off and we had some time to ourselves. It started to rain as we left the parking lot, which rule out a park trip. Nick wanted to come home and watch a movie. I think he is tired and needs some chill out time. Ellie and Rob came home and I said I had to do some grocery shopping. Nick joined me and Ellie went with Rob to do a couple side jobs. We met back here and went to the pool. It was a great day to be at the pool. It was hot and sunny. We spent a couple hours there until the clouds turned dark and it looked like it was going to rain. We told the kids because we were so hot and worn out that we would have to have ice cream sundaes for dinner. We made banana splits and the kids loved it.
Tuesday morning Ellie told me we didn't have to walk her into school and I could just drop her at the curb...starting already. Nick and I went to Salvation and looked around. It is funny because Ellie is usually my thrift buddy but Nick was picking out his own clothes. We went to Michael's to see if there were any projects we wanted to work on but couldn't really find anything. Ellie came home from camp, we had lunch together. Our afternoon plan was to go see Monster University. It was a cute movie. We hit the pool when we got home but the day was not so sunny and the water felt really cold. Rob jumped in and pretty quickly got out. The kids played for a couple hours, though. Nick felt brave and tried the blue slide and loved it. I watched as he swam the deep end a couple times by himself. We came home and made pizzas and I cut up some fruit and veggies.
We have a family friend that could really use some positive thoughts right now, they received some tough  news this week. Hoping to get back to normal tomorrow in the basement. Visualizing my healthy and continually healing body and the new normal, Tree