Yep, we had a flood.

It all started when it rained like crazy...I'm talking Noah crazy.  It's rained hard before and we've survived it.  We've had our yard filled with water before too and our house has never flooded.  But this one really got close!

Once the rain stopped we thought we were in the clear.  Then the retention basin overflowed!  Evidently other flooded areas (other parks and the freeway) were being pumped into our park and it just couldn't handle it.  We were there to watch the excitement.

  My neighbor called to say there was water on the street so we went to take a look.  We walked to the end of the block and looked at the park.

Or, the lake...whatever you want to call it-but there was no grass or volleyball net or even basketball hoops any more!  Just water!  While we were standing there it kept getting higher and higher and then flowed over the berm and down the street!

 And it kept getting higher and higher!  At this point we decided we had better find the nearest sand-bag distribution to try and help some of our neighbors stay dry!  You can still see the grass in the background.  At the height of the flood water went all the way up to every door on the street!

 Luckily, our house is around the corner and just a little bit higher! We had water in our yard, but it never came up over the foundation and into the house!  Our shed got pretty wet though...

 Sand bags kept the water from getting into the garage.

 The threshold was high enough that we didn't need the sand bags, but they were there just in case!

 The water receded pretty quickly from our yard-but others were not so lucky.  We then had a power outage for about 24 hours.  Thankfully Clay had a generator we could borrow to keep our freezers going!  It was awesome!  I think that will have to be our next investment.

We had a pretty exciting week and thankfully we were relatively dry.  The water was great for our lawn and trees!