Camping With the Three Little Kids
Last summer when Madalyn was home she, Thomas, Kaitlyn and Makenna all wanted some “big kid” time together, so I took the 3 little kids camping at Grayson Highlands. We had a great time! This summer we decided to do the same thing. The big kids took care of the farm and blueberry patch and also enjoyed time together while I enjoyed taking the 3 little kids camping. This year we went to a campground with a lake. It was hotter than we wanted so we came home a day early, but it turned out good because the next night we got a major flood.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures, but I did do a vlog about our camping trip. My favorite part was hiking to a waterfall that we played in all afternoon. We were the only ones there and it was nice and cool and serene. See it in the vlog!
Flood Out of Nowhere!
You HAVE to see the vlog about the flood! We were predicted to get a few afternoon showers and we did. One would come and then it cleared up and I did my miracles video, then another came, and it cleared up again. Just like any normal summer afternoon and evening. Then around 10:00pm (check the vlog for the actual timing b/c I can’t remember now) Madalyn and the girls were hanging out seeing how flexible they were or something and I hear pounding on the roof. The girls are laughing and not really caring, but I’m like, “Wow! This is an incredible downpour.” It doesn’t stop. It keeps going and going. I’m checking the rain gauge every so often and can’t believe how fast it’s filling up. I’m excited because we’ve had some drought conditions this summer and we need the rain. Our record rain in one storm is 7″ during a tropical storm, so this storm is looking to beat that.
In the morning we calculate that we got 10″!! From one storm!! Incredible! The 8 of us get ready for church and hop in the van. We start to drive up the driveway (Kaitlyn is driving) and then see the damage. Our driveway has washed away! I hope out of the car and stare at it. I can’t believe it. The ruts are so deep we can’t drive up it. We’ve never seen anything like it in the 5 years of living here, not even during hurricanes. Turns out the previous owners who lived here for 40 years had never seen anything like it either. Turns out nobody alive has seen anything like it. It’s the flood of the century. But it has only hit our area. A small bulls-eye area got 10″. Around us got 7″, further out got 3″ and only 20 miles away got 1″.
Monday: Cleanup Begins
Every morning I work in the garden for an hour as the children are waking up so Monday was no different. When I walked up to the house from the garden I saw the 5 little kids on the porch doing a morning devotional. Samuel was leading it (which I’ve never seen before) and I felt so proud of him. They’re all growing up so fast.
It also happened to be our first day of school. So we worked on the driveway together for a little bit, came in and started school, then went back out in the afternoon to work and sweat trying to smooth out the ruts.
Most of the gravel had washed onto the grass and huge rocks were now showing up in the red dirt. We tried to shovel gravel out of the grass and onto the driveway. We also tried to arrange the rocks so that could be covered by the gravel, or we just pulled them out. It was a lot of hot, back breaking work most of Monday and Tuesday. Thomas worked the longest and he ended up working on it for months afterward.
Tuesday our bishop came over with his box blade and scraped the driveway. Tilly had gotten a new little ATV ride on toy from a company in exchange for a video review. She drove it up to the work site multiple times a day. Then when Bishop came, she switched it out for a full size tractor!
Here is some other damage that was done that night from around the area. Crazy!!
