There's a hole in the bucket basement

Sunday morning Ike came through with some pretty heavy rain. The only reason I was really unhappy about this was because it was our company "Day at the Zoo" and the boys knew we were supposed to be going after church. I was still hopeful that Ike would move on and we could hit the zoo in the afternoon when I went downstairs to get something from the basement. We have a floor drain in the basement, and when the AC's been working hard it drains condensation into the floor drain. I noticed that the carpet squares around the drain looked a little damp, so I looked for a place I could move them to to allow them to dry out. And then I yelled up the stairs...

"Mark, the basement's leaking..." and said a prayer of thanksgiving that our house is a rental. :) :)

Mark got various things moved around and discovered the source of the leak--a small crack in the wall that gets progressively bigger as it goes towards the floor and ends in a hole. The water was, well, not gushing, but it certainly wasn't trickling in either. Thankfully, Mark moved the carpet squares out of the way and the water ran straight into the floor drain. Our basement has smelled a little damp the past few days but seems to be drying out nicely. We put in a call to our landlord and hopefully they'll be able to get the crack sealed up before any more rain.

And we did make it to the zoo on Sunday. Since the weather had been so bad, they had canceled our company day, but since the zoo itself had shut down several of their "attractions" (the train, the carousel, anything outside that required electricity), they made everything else free! So we saw the sea lion show, watched the bear feedings, toured the dinosaur exhibit, and visited a few other animals that the boys like. It turned out to be a great day to be at the zoo since the weather was really cool and there were not very many other people there. And they're rescheduling the company day at the zoo so we get to go again! :)