When I walked in the girls' bedroom this morning, I stepped on something wet.  I grumbled under my breath about them spilling yet another sippy cup of juice or maybe they were having another one of their "not-so-imaginary" tea parties that involves mutliple vessels being filled and refilled and refilled from the kitchen sink.  It wasn't until Steve walked across the floor and said, "This is way too much water for any kind of spill" that I started to feel anxiety in the pit of my stomach.  He walked across their floor and as I did, I heard the swhooshy, swhooshy sound that only comes from water, lots and  lots of water.  Water that comes from underneath the carpet, not water that is spilled  on top of it.  The carpet in their room made that sound one time before - in the late, late summer of 2004, after Hurricane Ivan struck our town early on a September morning.  That sound is not a good way to start your Sunday morning.  Trust me.  We went and looked in the girls' closet and saw standing water.  This is not gonna be a good day....

Steve says the water is coming from somewhere in the kitchen.  My anxiety starts to escalate.  Because, the girls' floor isn't that huge of a deal to me - it's still carpeted and we plan on redoing it with wood flooring at some point in the next couple of years.  The kitchen, though, now that's a bigger deal to me.  So, I walk in there and immediately realize that at least some of the water that leaked into the girls' room has leaked into the kitchen as well. 

I love, love, love the floor in my kitchen.  It is wood laminate flooring that we installed in the living room, the kitchen and the laundry almost three years ago.  It is the color of honey and when the morning sun streams through the bay windows in my kitchen, I feel warm and happy and well, sunshiney.  The problem with wood laminate flooring is that it's laminate, which means it's particle board, which means when it gets wet...well, let's just say bad things start to happen (Now, for full disclosure here, even if the floor was true hardwood, getting it wet wouldn't be a great idea either....so just because the laminate is less expensive I don't think means it's any more prone to death by water).  As I walked across the kitchen floor, I heard squishing (which sounded different than the swooshy sound in the girls' room, but equally - or maybe more so - disturbing).  Some of the boards were already starting to lift.  Two sure signs that there was water.

Steve quickly determined that the leak was coming from a dishwasher hose.  He told me the name of it, but I promptly forgot it, preferring to call it instead, the stinking stupid hose that messed up my mouse.  He fixed the leak with some kind of magic McGyver stuff and then came in the living room and asked if I would go ahead and get the girls ready for church.

Hello?  I looked at him like he was from mars.  Literally 30% of the rooms in our house have standing water in them.  Church?  That was the last thing on my mind.  He said, in his usually practical manner, "Well there's no point in sitting around here.  There's nothing we can do."

So, I put the girls in their blue velvet dresses, dug something out of the closet for me and went somewhat grudingly with my family to our 9:00 a.m. church service, feeling ridiculously sorry for myself and our run of plain old bad luck.  Where my grumpy attitude was quickly and abruptly put into place.

I dropped a crying Abigail off in the nursery (she LOVES church, I think she was just picking up on my stress from the morning) and then went to sit with Gracie and Steve in the gym that serves as our sanctuary.  Within minutes of sitting down, our pastor made a request of the congregation.  One of the teachers at Abigail's preschool (which is also our church) is pregnant, due with her little boy sometime in early March.  She is a sweet, kind woman and both Abigail and Gracie love her.  On Wednesday night, the father of her baby was murdered, shot during an armed robbery.  The thing is, I knew this already.  I found out on Thursday morning through the grapevine that is mothers of preschoolers.  And while I certainly hadn't forgotten about this devastating event, it certainly wasn't in the forefront of my mind this morning.  At least it wasn't until our pastor stood before our congregation and told people about it and after the collective gasp from my church family, he asked to use the pastor's discrectionary fund to help her and her soon-to-be-born son.  And I turned and looked at Steve, sitting with his arm around our oldest daughter, and suddenly the water in the kitchen and the water in the bedroom seemed like nothing more than water under the bridge.  I went from feeling sorry for myself to realizing how incredibly blessed I am in a matter of seconds.  It's all a matter of perspective.....