When it Rains, it Pours...

Well folks, May was a rough month for us. Not only was the weather less than ideal, but nothing seemed to be going our way. Here's what the month of May looked like for us:

1. We live in the basement apartment of the house we own and a few weeks ago, the sewage backed up...from a drainage pipe right on the floor of our bathroom. Sewage water seeped all over our bathroom, hallway, kitchen, and soaked through a couple feet of the carpet of our family room. Blake took the day off work to help me deal with Roto-Rooter, All Pro Cleaning, and our home owners insurance company to sort out all the repairs, clean-up, and coverage. It took all day and we found out that, although Roto-Rooter cleared it out, our sewage pipe will have to be replaced if we don't want this to happen again. Until we can get it fixed, we are anxiously keeping an eye on that drain in our bathroom. Here's what the house currently looks like until we can get a new carpet/vinyl flooring put in:

The shirts on the floor are a "bridge" so Taylor can get from the kitchen to the family room.

2. On top of that, our car had some issues, so we had to take it in for some repairs (naturally, the same day the sewage backed up). We've literally taken our car into our mechanic every single week for different repairs for the past 4 weeks. Thank goodness we have been able to borrow a car from Blake's brother so Blake can make the commute to Sandy for work.

3. This was only shortly after we discovered that we have some pigeons living in our roof and not one of the 3 companies we have called (multiple times) to have them removed has called us back. When we finally got in contact with a company that services the Provo area (apparently a lot of them don't) we discovered it would be an expensive fix. Great.

4. Our shower broke, so we had it temporarily fixed, but our handyman told us we will eventually need to do a more intensive and permanent fix which will, of course, cost more.

5. One Saturday while Blake was in the middle of mowing our lawn, the lawn mower just died on him. Unable to fix it, we have been borrowing my dad's mower every week since. Jury's out on how much that will cost to fix, but let's just say it's on the bottom of the to-do list.

Yes, all of these things really happened in just the month of May. We can't seem to catch a break...sometimes it feels like we take 1 step forward only to take 10 steps back. Oh, well. We are getting a good lesson in humility and finding the good in even the worst of circumstances (ex. "We may be standing in sewage, but at least we have our health!"). We have also discovered once again what a great blessing it is to have such wonderful parents that have helped us and commiserated with us through it all. Let's hope the month of June proves to be a sunnier one for us...

...much like today :)