Thanks! You too.

I have lived in my house since October of 1990. Before 1997, we had never had any flooding. Once when it rained what seemed like forever, we had water coming up through the cracks in the basement floor. At that
time, there was a sump tank... but no pump in it. I went out and bought a sump pump then so if there was
any time when there was water in the basement, we could pump it out.

Unfortunately in 2007, we got a lot of rain and the ground was saturated, with nowhere for the water to go..
It rose very quickly and ended up being at a higher level that where we had the pump situated to pump water
out. If we had opened the window, it would have poured in faster than we could pump it out! We now have the hose for the sump pump coming out the side of the house.. higher than the basement window. Everything
for the sump pump is permanently mounted and then we just attach a hose on the outside of the house to
carry the water down to the ditch.

As I said, during the flood of 2007... there was a lot of damage in SouthEastern, MN. There was millions
of dollars in damage in Whitewater State Park, which is about 9 miles from us. There were roads that were
washed completely out and I believe that 9 people died because of the flooding. A city called Rushford was
almost totally destroyed because their dam burst due to all the rain. A small town had a lot of their homes
destroyed... and since none had flood insurance (which isn't a requirement for this area since it isn't a flood
zone) NONE of their damages were covered by insurance. There were 7 counties in SE MN that were
declared disaster areas... Most everywhere, things are back to normal, but there is still damage that will
take years to be repaired. In areas at the state park where there used to be trees on hillsides... it is empty
of everything but rock...

I swear that my hubby and his father each have cast iron stomachs! When I first started making salsa for my
ex-husband in the early 90's I found a recipe, and followed it to the letter... unfortunately he complained that it tasted too much like vinegar... so I threw the whole thing away and told him to use store bought! He and I got divorced in 1997 and it was after that when I found the Ball Salsa Mix at Wal-Mart. My present husband eats a
lot of salsa and chips, so this mix works out great. Each batch makes 7 pints, so I made 2 batches, with his
help... otherwise he wouldn't get it. I said he has to help me seed the tomatoes. It takes a couple hours to blanch, peel and then seed them. I know the batch we made yesterday is SPICY... my eyes were starting to
water from the jalapeno smell...I actually cut up the jalapenos on Thursday night... so I had less to do while we
were getting it all together.

I think I will delete a few of the pictures I have in my gallery so I can post some pictures I took of our
backyards while it was still raining. There is a ditch that runs behind the houses and also along the north side
of ours. I think you may find them very interesting. Our next door neighbors have a split level house, so they
ended up having a couple inches of water on their floor. Luckily, their lower level isn't carpeted!! The guy is a
total wuss!! He was complaining about the water 3 years ago until he found out how much we had in our basement. I think he was glad at that time that they don't have a basement. Once it stopped raining, my
hubby and the neighbor took a sump pump into the back yards and pumped the water back into the ditch
where it originally came from... just not into the same area of the ditch!