We were very fortunate to come out of Uri the way we did.
We lost power for only 12 hrs and water for less than that. I know a family that went over 80 hrs without power in the freezing cold. What a mess.

We did have an incident though.

It was a cold Tuesday morning. More cold than it should ever be in Texas.
We were having a really lazy morning because none of us wanted to deal with cold.
My son had come into our room after waking up so the 3 of us were just lying down in bed trying to stay warm under our electric blankets.

I remember thinking — this is good; this is nice to spend the morning like this; everything will be good and we’ll get to next week sooner than later — when my wife rudely interrupted my happy thoughts with: did you hear that?
No. I hadn’t heard anything.
But she was insistent that she hears running water.
I got up to check on our bathroom and that’s when I, too, heard the gushing of water.

Well. Here’s the thing.
I had no idea where our main water valve was. I know, I know.
I literally had no idea what I was to do next.
Thankfully, my neighbor was home and he was able to locate our main water valve within seconds.
First crisis down.
But I still had no idea what to do next in trying to gather my thoughts, I saw our ceiling slowly — but steadily — getting closer and closer to the ground.

And then BOOM

The sky fell.

I called the first person that popped in my mind to ask what we need to do now that our bathroom ceiling was no longer a ceiling.
He gave me a number to a plumber and then showed up with his two sons and a wet vac shortly after.

It was a pretty wild and stressful morning.
But you know what? We were still fortunate how everything played out afterwards.
Because:
the Foremans came out to help clean up the initial mess.
our insurance agent connected us with a contractor who was at our house within an hour or so.
while the first plumber we called put us on a waiting list with 100 people in front of us, the contractor called his guy and that guy was at our house within hours.

We got everything cleared out and water running again all in the same day.

At the end of the day, we couldn’t help but laugh.
My wife told me that some major points were deducted from my “man card.”
That’s totally fair.
I tell you what though, I’m always gonna know, now, where the main water valve is in every home I live in.
I even went to see where my parents’s were when I went to stop by their house.

As the day was winding down, I decided to take stock in what we were fortunate with.
I decided for my sanity’s sake, to choose hope and joy and blessings.
The truth is, because of the people around us — it wasn’t too difficult to choose joy and to count the blessings.

We’ll eventually get the new floors we’ve been talking about since moving in.
However, I don’t recommend this method in getting new floors.