Flood

I'm sure many of you have heard of the flood warnings and problems happening in our area currently. Here is a summary of all the terrible things going on in our area. The big river in our area is currently at 26 feet and supposed to rise to over 40 feet by Friday. The flood our area had in 1997 crested at 39 feet. The mayor predicts this to be much worse than the '97 and '97 was pretty bad from what I remember hearing. Just to give some perspective to individuals who are not familiar with this regions flooding; the mayor said in a press conference this morning that the city had 3 weeks to prepare for the '97 flood-which turned out to be pretty bad......we have 1 week to prepare for the '09 flood.....

All the colleges/universities in our area have cancelled classes today and all students were supposed to report to the sandbagging stations to help with the efforts. Many high school students are also excused to help. The mayor is asking many businesses to close their doors so as many people as possible can get out and volunteer with sandbagging. Many of our jail inmates are expected to get out and help as well.

As far as our "suburb" community and our immediate home is concerned, I think we will be ok since the river near our home will flood into the diversion that was built specifically for a time like this. Ty continually checks our sump pump to make sure we are ok in that respect. Another big concern we have though is that our hospital is near the river and if it does in fact flood and baby time arrives-where do we go? I guess Ty should get started making his boat to row us over there. We had two birth/newborn classes scheduled this week at our hospital and they were cancelled already. This entire region will be on pins and needles this entire week waiting for the water to come/or not to come. I believe our area is already considered a state of emergency and FEMA has been here for a week or so.

We are keeping a good eye on our home and as most of you know I am not one who can just sit by watching as others work, so I feel terribly guilty that I cannot be an extra person to help with the sandbagging efforts. The helpless feeling has set in as I can only watch as this natural disaster approaches us and our community.

As far as Peanut is concerned, this will be a memorable year for him/her to be born, that's for sure. Positive thinking once again-a dang good birth story will likely come out of all this!