Behind our home is a quaint little creek called "Deer Creek". It runs about 3 inches deep and a foot wide between ours and our neighbors fence. During heavy rain storms, we have seen it swell to the bottom of the fence line! Watching the crrek rise during storms has been one of our family past times!
Then came Ike. On Sunday, September 14, 2008, Ike came rolling through Edwardsville, IL as a tropical storm! 
In less then 3 hours it dumped over 5.5 inches of water on our little community. Our little creek turned into a raging river; swelling to over 25 feet deep! It was impressive to watch, until it came up to the bottom of our little 4 foot retaining wall. We started thinking we might be in trouble... In less then 5 minutes, the water had crested our wall and was pouring into our home. We were scrambling to get things upstairs as fast as the six of us could. Darlene made a quick call to Lisa (our Relief Society President) to let her know she wouldn't be in church. Minutes later, we had several members from our Ward wading in water and helping carry things up. They even grabbed the camera and started taking pictures for us. The water reached about 18 inches in the house befroe it began to receed. It was all very overwhelming... the storm and the flooding, yes... but mostly the love, compassion, and service of so many.
A deeply sincere thank you goes out to all those who helped. We could not have "weathered this storm" without the places to stay, meals, cleaning crew, handymen, and prayers on our behalf. We feel very blessed.
Extensive damage was done to our home. It's still a little tough to deal with so the details will have to wait until another time. Here are some photos...
as the water receeded, the carpet was floating...
If you look close you can see the outside water line a good foot above the inside water line. When this photo was taken the water was still rising... That's one of our leather chairs to the left and a quilt from one of the beds (in a different room) floating around...
This is the hallway leading to the boys bathroom and bedrooms... after the water had gone down,
this was what was left to pump out.
