It didn't rain, but it did pour (into our basement)

Dear James, Daniel and Emily,

On a day when I returned to work after a 2 day layoff due to school closures, faced off and conquered the variable will power of exercise, I was met by a mid afternoon call from Kim along the following lines:

"(indecipherable expletive) How do I turn off the water in the house, a pipe burst and it's pouring all over the basement!"

After talking her through finding the water turn off, I packed up and went home while she took James to his basketball game. I was surprisingly calm (not known for facing such calamities lightly in the past). I had a plan, and put it into play as soon as I got home:

1. Change shoes into water shoes
2. Take pictures of as much damage as I could
3. Call Insurance agent to start the claim process
4. Call plumber (it took 5 tries until I got someone who was able to make it that day)

By that time Kim had returned and Connie showed up and we began cleaning up.

1. Clear off the shelves and floor, throwing away toys that were obviously shot.
2. Move furniture off the deeper water areas
3. Started emptying water buckets at which point the plumber showed
4. Plumber fixed the pipe
5. Kim made executive decision that I agreed with to just remove the sopping wet carpet. Had this been summer and we could have just opened the windows etc it might have made sense to try and dry it out, but it wasn't. And with the expected deductible and likelihood of third party water clean up crew not arriving until today it made no sense to just let the water sit on the soaked carpet when it would probably be called a loss anyway.
6. I carried the pieces up stairs and out to the trash area while Kim and Connie took up the carpet in pieces and gradually sucked up the standing water. We finished around 6:30. So now the main area has no carpet, there is a good sized area of the ceiling with no insulation or sheet rock. And the shelves on the kids toy shelf were soaked and ruined (particle board does not handle that sort of thing well).
7. Now it will be up to the insurance company to figure out how much we get back to replace things (I am not super confident of how this will go). Worst case scenario is we get to replace it all out of pocket.

On the positive side of all this:

1. We operated as a team, getting things done without fighting or anger or disputes. Not that that happens often, but there have been times that we have had catastrophes and I (and occasionally Kim, but mostly me) have not handled the resulting stress well.

2. We can approach the kids play area with a bit of a clean slate, and maybe organize things in a way that works a little better at managing the inherent chaos.

3. We had talked about redoing the flooring in the basement, now we have no choice.