Ringing in the New Year!

This will be my last post of 2008!!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! We are ringing in the New Year in a way we never would have imagined. Brad went to go down to the basement last night only to find that the basement had flooded. We had 3 inches of water in the whole basement. Brad immediately went to Menards and bought 2 new sump pumps and some other odds and ends that we were going to need. We got most of the water out of the basement last night. Now, it's like a parking lot after a really good rain. What we found out was that the drainage pipe that goes from the sump pump burst under our back porch and the water was coming in through the basement window. I ordered a dumpster this morning and it was delivered about an hour or so later. We have brought a lot of stuff up for the trash and then another fair amount for Goodwill or Amvets. We still have a bit to go as well. It was really sad seeing so many of our possessions being thrown away. I know that most of the stuff we didn't need, but there were some keepsakes that brought tears to my eyes. Years ago I had packed up a bunch of Brad and Dawn's stuff from their wedding for the kids when they got older. Well, it was sitting on the floor of the basement and all but a couple things were trashed. It killed me having to throw all that away. I brought the girls down and showed them the stuff before we threw it away. I think it meant a lot that I had tried to save stuff for them. This is definitely not how I envisioned us starting out the new year.

I love the author Neta Jackson. She wrote the Yada Yada Prayer Group Series and to say that I enjoyed them would be a HUGE understatement! I love them. Love. Love. Love. I have all of them and I've probably read each of them at least five times. She has just started a new series called the Yada Yada House of Hope. The first book in the series is "Where do I go" and I bought it yesterday. I started reading it last night and had it done by about 6 this evening. I cannot put her books down! Her husband, Dave Jackson, has wrote "Harry Bentley's Second Chance" and that just came out. A snippet from their website says: "We're trying something new! Not just for us, but something completely new in Christian fiction: "Parallel novels," two stories taking place in the same time frame, same neighborhood, involving some of the same characters living through their own dramas and crises but interacting with and affecting one another ... just the way it happens in real life." I am anxious to read "Harry Bentley's Second Chance". Hopefully I'll be able to get that sometime in the near future. I am also going to start reading "The Power of a Praying Wife" tomorrow. I really want to do better about praying for Brad. Anyone want to join me??

I should really get off of here for right now. I'm so exhausted! It's 10:30 on New Year's Eve...Brad is alseep next to me on the couch, I want to be asleep and Haeley, Jasmine and Gabe are still up playing Wii. When did Brad and I get so old???