Two and a half weeks!

Today Stephen returned to work after being home with us for two and half weeks.  We were all pretty sad to see him off as he got out of the car this morning at the metro.  Little Stephen asked where daddy was all day, and when we returned from a play date and saw Stephen's car, he yelled enthusiastically "Daddy home!" 
While we loved our time together and had a great vacation during the second half of the two weeks, our first week started off with some, well...natural disasters.  The remnants of Hurricane Lee that dropped so much rain in this area was not kind to our house that had made it through Irene and an earthquake unscathed.  First, we had a flash flood.  This was truly one of the wildest things I have ever seen.  These pictures do not do it justice at all.  The water was unbelievable and fast-moving.  If you look closely you can see the road in these pictures.  The cars, which attempted to go through, were covered past their tires in water.  Little Stephen stood at the front windows yelling "Oh God!" 

Unfortunately, the force of the water coming into our sump pump broke the pump that allowed the water to exit the house.  Steve and I spent over six hours manually emptying the sump pump to avoid the basement from filling with water.  Later that night, our hot water heater started leaking water and had to be replaced! 

Then a few days later this happened:

We were so lucky this came down the way it did and not on the bedrooms of our sleeping babies!  Believe it or not, this is actually just a branch!  What a crazy few days!  Luckily, our minor setbacks did not ruin our wonderful few weeks together.