Puerto Rico Citrus Hill Project - Day 4

I should have known how the day would go when we saw this hanging around outside the gym this morning. Crazy. Wacko. Only in Puerto Rico. Yep all those things. And the day didn’t get any less wild from there. 

We planned on a morning of some deep cleaning inside the house - washing walls, mopping, dusting, taking away old curtains and shelves, and prepping for painting. Our reward was going to be the rest of the day at the beach and the kids were excited! They all worked hard and we got the front room and entry way all done before we got a surprise visit from Kim and hector our friends just down the way! We love those two and had such a fun visit with them. Meanwhile and they were looking around the house and we were chatting, it started to rain. And rain hard. 

Kim finally said that they better go cause their dogs would be nervous with the thunder and lightning that was going on, so off they went. And we settled in and realized that we might not be going to the beach after all. We sat outside and watched the rain come down in sheets from our covered garage and couldn’t hardly believe the amount of water that was falling! Josh jumped on a phone call and the kids and I started lunch. A minute later Liev came out and said that there was water all over the floor in the girls room. And sure enough…the floor was flooding and we all went into discovery mode trying to figure out where the water was coming from. We figured out soon enough that water was coming in from the back room as well and flooding out into the main room and kitchen. Quick as we could we picked up everything from the ground and piled it onto beds and tables and anything that was high enough to keep dry. Josh jumped off his call and came and helped us get buckets and garbage cans and towels to try and keep the water from continually flooding the house. But still a large amount of water was getting in and we were just doing our best to get it out fast as we could! I went outside and found a large area on the back of the house that had a big pool of water gathering and started digging a trench to let that water go. Josh joined me and we found another pool on the side of the house doing the same thing. We dug and dug and made a little progress while the kids were hauling buckets in and out and mopping the water out the front door. It was a group effort and we did good! Finally…the rain started the let up and the pools around the house drained enough that the water stopped flooding into the house. We breathed a small sigh of relief then started working inside to clear all the standing water that was left. We mopped and squeegeed until it was as dry as we could get it, then turned on the fans and hoped that would dry it out the rest of the way. It was quite and event and we could hardly believe that had just happened! 

We hung the towels out to dry somewhat, left the fans on and headed down the street to the basketball court to get out of the craziness at home. Josh left for the laundromat with three baskets full of dirty laundry and towels (we haven’t had our washer and dryer delivered yet) and was going to try and get some work done on the WiFi at the laundromat. 

We played basketball, threw the football around and then eventually lost the soccer ball down a small ravine that led to a larger stream that was even more like a river because of all the rain. So that was the end of the soccer ball that we just bought yesterday. 

We got back home just around dinner time and had lots of leftovers in the fridge. Leftover night is always fun cause no one can decide which old dinner they want to have. Lots of dishes later we realized that the water was off again.  So ironic that we just got loads of water flooding into our house, but none coming out of our faucet when we need it. I feel like we should be used to it since it has gone off at some point every day since we got here. But it still makes me crazy! Anyway…we left a pile of dishes in the sink to be done later. 

I sat down the fold laundry, the kids turned on a movie and josh was trying to finish up one last work call of the day. And wouldn’t you know…the power goes out. Why not? The adventure continues on the island and we just jumped right in again for one more thing.  We got the candles and flashlights out (which we luckily bought this week just in case), finished the laundry and getting beds ready in the last few hints of daylight and sat down for bedtime book and and early night to bed. It’s not too uncommon for the power to go out here for a little while so I wasn’t too worried when it went off. Then we got a couple texts from Kim and Carmen and realized that maybe this power outage might be more involved. Turns out there was a fire at one of the substations and 700k people on the island are without power! Who knows how long this will last. 

So here I am writing this while josh is off to Home Depot to buy a generator. Still no power. Still no water. But I’ll tell you this…we have a dry house and four boys laying by me doing puppet stories on the wall in the shadow of the candlelight. We’re rollin with this wild ride we’ve started and I am so glad to have the crew that I have with me! It has been AN ADVENTURE today. But I guess that’s what we signed up for right? Bring it on…