Just a quick update for those wondering: it seems as if the damage was pretty much contained to several boxes of books. I did have one box of fabric get wet as well, but that's no problem--I just have to find a new box to put it all in! The books don't look the greatest, and the worst damaged ones are my favorite and most used sewing books (which were lined up under the sewing table), but everything is still readable. I spent most of last Thursday morning paging through the books page by page in the sunshine to make sure the pages wouldn't stick together and rip the printing.

The culprit:

This is a part from inside the toilet. The metal screw part at the right side (excuse my technical terms) just broke off the metal pipe. DH took it to the local hardware and we may have to replace the entire toilet, but compared to what could have been... (I don't think I can count the number of times I've said that in the past week. The number of ways this could have been worse are innumerable.)
Thank you to everyone for your prayers and thoughts. Looking back it barely seems a blip in the road last week.

Today was, very unofficially, our first day of school. I know I'm supposed to have a picture and everything, but it wasn't really planned this way, so maybe we'll try again on our official first day.
My main goals for kindergarten this year are to establish some habits and a routine in hopes that will make things easier when we actually have to get in some academics. One of my methods for that was to create a chore chart for HoneyBee. I've had it planned for a week or so, but only had time to put computer file to it last night. I introduced it this morning and HoneyBee thought it was absolutely wonderful! We “read” through it together (it's mostly pictures) and then went through each of the tasks together, some requiring more of my help than others (since she hadn't really done them before). Now every morning, she gets to check off feeding the cat & dog, wiping out the bathroom sink (she gets toothpaste ALL over), and tidying her room. We'll see how long the novelty lasts.
She was soooooo excited with this and the thought that we were finally going to start school that I decided to add a couple more things that didn't require much planning. So we went down to our new-to-us piano ($10 from the thrift store last week, but it needs tuning desperately), and worked on learning the “Doxology.” Our church sings it every week and I would really like her to know it. We'll need to work on it a few more days. After that, I needed to get back to my jelly-making (trying my hand at apple jelly from a tree on our property line), so I gave her some of the BOB books that she had read last year to review telling her to pick one that she would read to me when I was done. I did have to remind her to read the words and not look at the pictures. (She read “Sam crying.” instead of “Sad Sam.” ) She hasn't read back to me yet, so we'll see how that goes. While I was finishing up the jelly, she wanted something more, so she swept out and cleaned the floors in the laundry room and bathroom.
The rest of this week we'll continue to work on making the chores habit and doing the other once/week chores. (I have another list detailing what we do each day of the week: Monday we changed the bed sheets, Tuesday we clean the bathrooms, etc...) I just downloaded some of the music for this term's composer (Johann Sebastian Bach), so we may stick that in as well. I'm also getting things together for our first camping trip ever (as a family--my first in 20+ years). Once we get home from that I hope to start doing a little more formal schooling, but kindergarten will still be a pretty relaxed year.

Updated to add: We just whipped right through the first four BOB books. There were a few words here and there that I had to have her look at again (“has” for “had” and “bag” for “rag” ), but otherwise she did great. Last year when we did them she had to sound out every single word every single time, even if she'd already read it once on that page. Today she only sounded out the words I had her look at again!

I had a “wonderful” wake-up call this morning: DH stuck his head in the bedroom door and suggested I go look at the basement. I dragged myself out of bed and headed down the stairs, dreading what I might see. I actually had visions of an animal having gotten in during the night and made a mess. I'm not sure if what I found was better or not...a roomful of 1-2“ deep water.
In all honesty, it was only 1-2” deep in some places, most notably my entire sewing area. A lot of the floor was just wet. DH told me to grab some towels and buckets and started unplugging things and carrying wet stuff outside. I found all our old towels and headed down to assess the damage. Fortunately, the basement seems to dip in the middle and so the two sides of the basement, including DH's office (with lots of sensitive electrical equipment in it (computers, stereo stuff, keyboards, etc), 2/3 of the storage room, and all the kids toys were spared. We also have several shelves down there which kept some other stuff from destruction. Unfortunately, the two boxes of all my sewing and quilting books were on the floor in the areas that got hit the worst. Thus ALL my sewing/quilting books and magazines are now water damaged. Every. Single. One. The one exception being all my Ottobre magazines which were on my sewing table, but half of those got damaged in another water accident a couple years ago...
The books are all out on the deck now waiting for the afternoon sun to start the drying process. And we borrowed DH's dad's big wet/dry vac to suck out the water, so the floor is all just damp now (and drying quickly with the help of three fans and a dehumidifier). Those wet/dry vacs are wonderful things!
On the bright side:
- As my DFiL said, “this is only supposed to happen when it's 0 degrees out.” And it wasn't!
- It's a sunny day, so we could put our stuff outside and not worry about rain. Hopefully, the sun will works it's magic later today.
- The damage seems to be contained to just several boxes of books. A very unhappy thing to say the least, but considering what could have been... Some boxes of fabric got wet too, but fabric dries.
- Because our basement is still partially finished, most of the electrical outlets are in the ceiling, keeping much of the electric stuff out of the water. (I am waiting 'til later today to check that status of my sewing machine pedals and computer which were all in the water.)
- We did NOT have an impromptu science lesson on how electricity is conducted through water!
- The HoneyBee was a great helper, moving all the toys out of the way and laying out the books on the deck to dry.
- The Little Chimp slept through most of the clean up, giving me two hands and a clear head to get things done.
- The water stopped just before some critical areas: DH's office and the rest of the storage room.
- The problem appears contained to the toilet in the downstairs bathroom, so we can continue to use the upstairs appliances/bathrooms and not worry. (Our washer & dryer are upstairs!!)
- It was all clean, fresh water, not a backup from the septic system!!
- The only carpets down there were area rugs, so no worries about wet padding or mold development.

That's all I can think of for now. We'll do another check this evening once things have dried and I see how badly damaged my books are...

I have a rather odd-shaped ironing board, and it has needed a new cover for some time. Not only was the old one stained pretty badly, it was also held on with a drawstring...a drawstring which had been cut by a certain small someone experimenting with scissors. The casing was also cut, and in a later experimentation, a whole little strip was chopped out of that side. This week I finally got sick of always having to shift the cover around when ironing, not to mention looking at all the water stains and iron marks all the time. So I determined to make myself a new cover. I've been reading how simple they are.
So, yesterday, a friend picked up a very pretty shower curtain from a yard sale for $2. She knew about my bag project and thought it would make some nice bags. Well, it would make some great bags, and still will...just not as many! I chopped off one side of it and whipped up a new cover in about 15 minutes. Five minutes to lay the old cover on it and cut it out and 10 minutes to sew some fold-over elastic around the edges and put it on the ironing board. I don't know what could be simpler, especially since looks don't matter and no one will know I missed the elastic in some spots (except that I just told you all.)
What I had to look at before every time I sewed

Penn York Camp is having its annual Labor Day auction in a couple weeks. Our church is a big supporter of this camp and DH spent many great summer growing up and later as a counselor here. To help support them, I decided to make some things for the auction. I made six bags: tote bags, reusable grocery bags, library bags, whatever you want bags. I must confess I actually ended up making eight bags. I fell in love with the fabric I made two of the first six bags out of and so I had to find some more fabric to make another two so I could keep those two for myself!
I also agreed to make some kind of baked good for the auction. So DH has been sacrificing himself by playing guinea pig the last couple weeks as I try out some recipes. I've got two more weeks (well, almost) to figure something out.
HoneyBee is quite excited about the auction because we will be camping out at the camp with a couple other families from church that entire weekend. She's been begging to “camp out” since the week we moved here.