My advice to you...

I don't have tons of helpful advice for people normally, but today I have a good one. Don't leave your hose(or hose pipe as it's called 'round here in these parts) connected during the winter if you live somewhere that might have freezing temperatures, or your pipes might freeze! Apparently, we should have already known this, but we didn't. Now we do.

Here's the whole story. We were outside enjoying a very warm day, and Chloe wanted to use her watering can. So I decided to water the trees in between filling her up. I'm not sure how long I had been doing this before Avery went inside (because he was in trouble) and came right back out screaming that there was water everywhere inside. After running in and grabbing the phone, it occurred to me that I should probably turn the water off outside. (I think Brady was actually the one who thought of it.) Thank goodness for the boys, because almost as soon as I yelled to turn off the water, it was off. Thankfully, it stopped pouring into the house, and we were able to start cleaning up. It was a lot of water. It was seeping out under the walls on three different sides. Anyway, we did what we could, but the damage was already done. Thankfully, once we contacted our insurance agent, things started happening very quickly. They came today and ripped out most of our hardwood, some drywall and insulation. It was incredibly loud downstairs, but it wasn't bad upstairs, so that's where we were most of the day. We now have eight industrial fans, two dehumidifiers and an air scrubber in our dining room, kitchen and hallway. We also have an incredible amount of dust. The fans are quite loud and make it nearly impossible to have a conversation. It's pretty crazy!! I'm just very thankful that it's something so easily fixed. I'm also thankful for home owners insurance!!