Got Ark?

As in, Noah's Ark? I'm thinking we may need one pretty soon. No one told me that Minnesota gets a monsoon season. Honestly, I do not think we've seen the sun in over a week. We're going to start sending Maya outside in a dinghy to go to the bathroom.

If you have a basement, you probably know that tons of rain and basements don't really mix. Knock on wood, we've stayed pretty dry save one small corner. As with most things in our house, we have quickly realize that when the previous owners added on our family room and made an addition in the basement, they didn't do it quite right. I live in Tim "the Tool-man" Taylor's house. They didn't seam the new basement wall well enough with the old foundation, so we had a slight leak. This was only realized when a gutter malfunctioned and was basically pouring water right into this crack.

So what did we do about this? We built a rain barrel! "Built a rain barrel?" you ask? Why yes, ye of little faith. My husband and I are quite creative. If you shop around you can find pretty, fancy barrels for big $$$. Well I just wasn't having that. Off to Lowe's we went where we bought a 32 gallon garage can, a spigot, a coupling (yea, Travis provided the word here), and some kind of a big hose thing. Drill hole in side of garbage can near the bottom, put spigot and coupling together, cut out hole in lid and attach hose to lid and bottom of gutter. Tada! Rain barrel! Our grand total? $31. Time spent? About an hour. Boo yah baby.

We also had a leaky sink this week. Again. Seeing a trend here? Luckily that was an easy fix. Travis bought the right kind of drain and replaced it in no time. It really makes me think "what the heck did the previous owners think they were doing here?" Obviously they had ZERO talent when it comes to plumbing. Or anything house related for that matter...but I digress. I'm starting to feel a bit water logged.

Trav's cousin also graduated from high school this year, and we were lucky to be able to go to his grad party down in St. Cloud on Saturday. Of course it rained the entire day so the party had to be moved inside and into the garage. We had planned on driving down ourselves, but Trav's parents were going and coming back the same day so we decided to go with them too. There just so happens to be a winery (yay wine!) on the way down, and of course I planned on stopping. Luckily I didn't have to work to hard to convince the in laws we should stop. They're closet wino's, I'm sure of it.

This winery uses honey and berries for most of their wines, and I was quite impressed! Check out Minnestalgia Winery to see their selection. We liked the Honeywine and Great Grey the best. If you like sweeter wines, try one of the fruit wines like Raspberry or Blueberry.

The party was fun, despite the rain. Clearly the winery was the highlight of the trip in my eyes, but it was great seeing the family as always.

That's all for now folks, have a great week!