A BIG Mess

Friday afternoon The toilet was stopped up and overflowed. I thought it was a big mess but would find out a little later that it wasn't so bad! I was trying to get the children dressed and ready to go caroling with our church at a nursing home where one of our church members lives. This was not a good time but I cleaned it up and continued getting the kids ready. Emma must have flushed the toilet again and the handle stayed down but I did not know that immediately. By the time I heard the toilet running the water was already on my bedroom floor (wood floors), the our entire bathroom was covered in water and Rob's closet was drenched in water. This was a BIG mess. It took most of the towels in the house along with the mop and bucket to get this mess dried up. I was supposed to be picking up some others to go caroling at 4:45 pm but did not leave my house until 4:40 pm. I soaked up as much water as I could from Rob's closet before I left the house and hooked up a fan to try and help dry it. We still made it on time for caroling and had a good time.

Saturday the toilet was still stopped up and so was the other bathroom toilet. Great right! This is not a good thing when you have nine people living in the house. We realized that the lights had went out on Friday for a brief time and sometimes that causes the sewer pumps in our neighborhood to go out and need to be reset. We were able to get in contact with someone to reset the pumps that day. Finally the children's bathroom started working but not ours. This must mean that there is something clogging the toilet...right! Rob went to the store and bought an auger to unclog the toilet but it didn't work. We figured we were going to have to call a plumber on Monday (We didn't want to pay the weekend rate.). In the mean time, Rob decided to take the toilet off of the floor. He turned it upside down and used the auger in reverse. Ding! Something fell from inside the toilet. What was it you asked?

It was a Tinkertoy wheel that had been flushed and lodged in the toilet! Yes, Emma was the cause for this mess. Now before you say that I blame everything on my sweet Emma, I did fish out Tinkertoys that Emma flushed on Friday. I thought that I had gotten them all but I guess one slipped down and got lodged in there.

Side note: All of the others have put things in the toilet but it has never created a mess like this one!

When we came home from church on Sunday night there was a terrible odor coming from the bathroom and had permeated the entire house. YUCK! It was coming from the carpet in Rob's closet. I kept that room shut off all day today. Rob had to come home tonight and pulled all of the carpet in his closet out and put down fungicide to kill any mold or mildew that had caused that smell. We are hoping that it is just coming from his closet and not mine too. I just got a little water on the edge of my carpet unlike Rob's closet that is next to the toilet area. Closet without carpet

All of Rob's clothes from his closet covering our king size bed!

We will have to eventually take the carpet out of my closet anyway to make it match the other closet once we decide what we want to put down. Hopefully this saga will come to an end soon!

Emma showing you the Tinkertoy wheel that caused all of the problems!

The joys of children...gotta love'em!