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Texas has nice winters. Sometimes it gets a little chilly, but it never snows (at least, if it does, it melts in the same day). Well, we got to live in the historical snow storm that almost killed Texas! We saw that snow was in the forecast and I shrugged it off because it would either not happen or, like stated above, melt and nothing would come of it. Well, this week was more than I bargained for and made it so I want to be more prepared for emergencies. You'd think I would have learned from the quarantine of 2020. I'll go day by day as it varied what happened.
Monday: We woke up to glorious snow bright and early and all the kids wanted to be out there. I dressed them one by one (heavily pregnant myself) and by the time I could get myself ready they were all done with it! Luckily Sam was out there to shoot all these pictures:
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| Eli making quite the snow angel. |
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| Perfect! |
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| Icicles on our San Antonio home?! |
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| Eden being the perfect princess she is. |
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| She doesn't have much experience with snow! |
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| Joey making snowballs. |
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| Look at that face! |
The snow already started melting mid day, like I predicted. Eden and Joey went back outside to play with icicles, build a tiny snowman, and throw snowballs at their mom.
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| "Unicorn!" |
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| "Nay-yay-yay-yay!" |
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| Joey's tiny snowman. |
What I didn't predict was the freezing temperatures night and day that caused a pipe to burst Tuesday night! It was a miracle we even found out about it in a timely manner. Last fall the San Antonio water company had a rebate for a Flume device. Essentially you stick it where your water meter is and it sends a signal to our phones about our water usage. What's cool is it will alert us if there is a potential leak or running toilet. It saved our downstairs!
Tuesday: Power outages were all over Texas and one family in our ward asked around if they could spend the night somewhere so they wouldn't freeze in their apartment. I said they could stay with us and started to get ready for the guests, even telling them they can take showers and whatnot as well. Their power ended up turning on so they didn't stay over, but it was a good thing they didn't because when Sam and I went to bed, Sam got a Flume alert about a potential leak. He went downstairs and sure enough there was water all over our kitchen floor. He quickly shut off the water and told me to bring pretty much every towel we owned. We mopped up the kitchen and started the process of filing a claim. Meanwhile we didn't have any water and didn't anticipate that.
Wednesday: Sam decided to hit the stores to see if we could get any water there (hahahaha) along with other groceries and I called around for any plumber I could find. Obviously this was happening everywhere and so many of the plumbers were so busy their inbox was full so I couldn't even leave a message. Sam waited in this RIDICULOUS line for HEB that wound all the way to the gas pumps. Of course he didn't find water, but he managed to get us food and whatnot. What saved us were our neighbors. We let them know and they came over with a bucket full of water along with three big containers of drinking water. He said they felt prompted to stock up on water and thank goodness they did! Sam in return got them supplies from the store. The other miracle was getting a plumber out the same day! Sam had to go into work Wednesday night but the plumbers came over and found the problem pipe and replaced it. They were a family company and super nice. I will be using them from now on. Sadly, it wasn't that easy for me or for Sam.
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Our pipes were frozen on Tuesday in the kitchen,
so we luckily got these dishes done before we had no water! |
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We tried drying the leak ourself. It worked for the problem area,
but sadly there was more damage than we thought. |
Thursday: It snowed again. It was very much not welcomed. Sam was gone all day, the Flume alerted me to another leak and I shut the water off, making it so we didn't have water again, the kids haven't been in school all week. I was in survival mode. To top it all off? Due to the weather Sam pulled another 24 hour shift since he couldn't drive home and didn't want the other residents to drive in. It was very noble of him and I understood. It was still a long day.
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| Icicles on our bushes! |
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| Snowing at BAMC. |
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| Sam powering through is boring and long call. |
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| The real trooper is Andy who was primary call. |
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| Boo! |
By Friday it was warming up, the plumber was able to come again (although he couldn't find anything and it took Sam to find the problem and call them back on Saturday). Sam came home after it picked up quite a bit in the hospital.
And Saturday? T shirt weather. In fact, we went to Sea World!
We are still trying to get our house in order after this ordeal. All the plumbers, mitigation teams, and contractors are in high demand! We didn't get mitigation in until I came home from the hospital with a baby and had fans blowing for days! We are waiting to hear back from insurance about the contractor's estimate in the kitchen, and we found roof damage so we had to file another claim. So all of this is happening with a new baby and we are moving in June, so it needs to happen soon. But with all said and done it could have been a lot worse for us that week. We could have had no power therefore no heat, light, etc. We could have not had our Flume installed and that bursted pipe could have done serious damage! Lastly, I could have gone into labor and had to figure all of that out as well (I was 37 weeks along!). Texas has some major issues and the infrastructure couldn't handle this. We will be literally paying for this for years to come!
