Always listen to your parents...

I think those are the famous words that we have heard out entire lives. Well, it is true even as an adult. Our basement flooded back in March thanks to a broken water line at the water heater. It took almost three weeks to get everything back to "normal". (I'm still waiting for the bathroom to be finished.) The ground outside the walkout basement has been wet ever since. We have been blaming it on the water from the basement and all of the rain that we have been having. My parents have been saying since mid April that it is too much water there that we must have a leak. I had called the Missouri Dig Rite people to have it marked, but didn't actually dig because it started to dry up. Then more rain came. We hadn't been able to read the water meter so I had been estimating the water bill for the last couple of months. When I have to estimate I always go higher than I think so I don't get stuck paying a lot all at once in case I'm wrong. However, this time I was WAY OFF!!! A typical month with three people in my house, two dogs, two horses, and about 35 cows and calves, and 1 bull we would use 15,000 - 18,000 gallons. I've been estimating about 20,000 gallons. Should have been plenty of cushion, right??? Well, no. Gail was able to actually read the meter yesterday, I did the math, and it showed that we used 55,000 gallons ($463) this month!!! Yeah, small heart attack. Obviously mom and dad were correct and we do have a leak somewhere. Lesson learned, always listed to your parents. I called Missouri Dig Rite again, and talked to a not so nice lady. (Her idea of helping me to understand her question was to just talk louder and louder. As if her yelling into the phone is going to make me understand why I need to "relocate" the lines instead of "remark". Stupid me thinks relocate means to move them. I hope you don't make that mistake also.) Now Gail gets to start digging and try to find the leak. Hopefully he'll be able to find it and everything can get back to normal.

Also, Gail and I are stay at home people. We don't go out and do a long of things. A typical summer we will have 3 or 4 things that we go do. Family reunions, birthday parties, etc. Just this weekend alone there were 4 things we had going on. Gail's cousin came to stay with us, my class reunion, family reunion, and we had made plans to go visit some friends. Obviously we had to skip something. I had to miss my class reunion. I was bummed because there were some people that I really wanted to see and visit with. We had had a small get together the weekend before with a few classmates so I guess not all was lost.

Lydia had her first "run in" with the dogs, literally. On Friday my niece was watching her while I was at summer school. She called in a panic because Charlie had accidentally knocked her down and then Annie stepped in her. She has a small scratch on her cheek. Now she is a little scared of them. She's getting over it gradually. I'm surprised that it took 11 months for it to happen.

I'm working on planning her first birthday party. I have gotten several things to decorate with, the menu is planned, and I'm all ready to go. I'm a little worried about her birthday cake. I want to have flying butterflies on it, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to make them look like they are flying. I thought about wire, but I don't know if it will work. If you have any ideas let me know.

Until next time...