A Week of Stresses And Messes

Ryan and Sean came over the other day while their mom was out running errands. The boys enjoyed some kidz vidz for a while.
How stinkin' adorable is that?
Pole dancin' at Grandma Edna's house. Jack and Amy spent the better part of a week in Des Moines with Susan, Granny Janny and Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa K being for them during this difficult time. Grandpa K is still holding on, proving the theory that a Koscielak never gives up.
Jack and Susan get snuggly in the waiting room. Time for a nap.
And taking a break from the sitcho to do some sliding.
Grandma Edna, Granny Janny and Jackles.
Watching Elmo at Grandma's house.
The theme for the rest of this post is 'water'. You'll see why really soon.
Pop-pop Jerry took this photo of Jack and Casper the Friendly Ghost at the water park. They came to town to see Jack on his b-day weekend. Dad and I ended up putting in a mini sump pump system in the basement which was nifty and worked really well...until last night's rain.

This little girl was obsessed with Jack at the water park. Can you blame the girl?
The waves were a lot of fun for Jack.
Catch a wave, dude!
He was trying to drink this fountain thingy.
Cuteness on a cracker.

Whoosh!
The Vrbas tongue is necessary even for playing in water. True story.
Here, Grandpa Jerry and Grandma Tami pose with the birthday boy in the arbor I built. Read on for info on that.
"I'm a model, you know what I mean..."
Okay, so our friends Sarah and Will gave us a huge playground that was in their yard when they moved in to their new house. They helped us haul it over here and we knew it needed 'tightening up' a bit. I worked on it and worked on it and couldn't get it tight enough to be safe for Jack. Well, since I'm not one to let dead trees go to waste, I used some of the wood for an arbor. One hour and $14 worth of trellis later, and we had this by our perennial bed. It's pretty cool. We're also going to use the slide too, and I was able to use the rest for a climbing place for our pole beans. Thanks, Will and Sarah!

Thanks, Gramps for all your help! Someday the pump will catch up!
Jack and Granny Janny.
This is kind of a stupe pic, but it shows the fact that it rained last night, which leads me to my next few pics. You knew we had a little water in our basement, right? Well, dad and I got the sump buried and it's pumping out roughly 6400 gallons of water per hour. And it's working overtime to get it done. Yesterday, it emptied the place OUT. After last night's torrential downpour, well see for yourself...
The water is back up higher than ever, and that's WITH 6400 gallons leaving every hour. Shameful. I do take some solace (VERY little though) in the fact that we are in no way alone in this situation. A simple drive around town and EVERYONE is having problems. The one thing we have in our favor is that our basement is merely concrete for storage. Nothing special. Though we don't have hot water or air right now, we'll survive and aren't out anything really. Oh, and can I just say that yes, there are a lot of cords in this picture, but they're being used safely. All the electrical bits and bobbles are quite dry. For true.
Proof of the madness. This was this morning. 9.5 inches of water in the basement! And it's higher now. Probably around 10.5 right now. Re-dic!

We'll post about Jack's b-day after this brief intermission to have a bit of a party in the park today. Totally impromptu and completely informal little friend party.