That's What the Emergency Fund is For

An emergency fund. Also known as Murphy Insurance [you remember Murphy - "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong"]. Financial Peace.

Last night we took our 5-year-old daughter to her second soccer game. She didn't want to go - soccer makes her tired and her legs hurt. She didn't play a whole lot but had fun playing duck, duck, goose on the bench with a couple other kids! We got home and let all three girls play outside for a bit. Chatted with the neighbor about his incredible new deck [our deck now has deck envy!] and then went in for bath time - and believe me! They needed it!

My husband and oldest sprayed off some toys that had gotten muddy while playing and then he went downstairs [walk-out basement] to get the towels for the girls.

Next thing I hear is him yelling at the girls to stop dumping water on the floor.

The only problem? They weren't dumping water on the floor.

There was water dripping out of an air vent and the floor was soaking wet. He immediately turned off the water to the house and we drained the tub - just in case it was leaking because it was right there too.

It turns out that the spigot on the front of the house burst in the ice storm last January. This was the first time we'd used it since. The pipe runs between floors and the water ran down the pipe and came out the air vent - the first opening it found.

So where are the blessings? We counted them.

Blessing 1: We didn't wash the cars on Sunday. Our daughters wanted to but we decided it was too chilly. The water would have been running for an hour or more instead of only 5 minutes and it would have taken much longer to discover, perhaps 2-3 days since we're not downstairs often this time of year.

Blessing 2: Our house is still under warranty. It should be fixed on Friday.

Blessing 3: If it's not covered by our warranty, then it's covered by our home owner's insurance. Yes, there will be a $1000 deductible, but we have that in our "Murphy Insurance" account. If it's more than that account can handle, well, my husband has been working incredibly hard for a bonus that was supposed to pay off the car [$1200], get bunk beds for the older girls [so the new baby will have somewhere to sleep], and maybe pay for a mini-10^th anniversary vacation. If we need to, we can use it for repairs - no more credit card debt!

Blessing 4: I did all of the laundry yesterday, so even if we had to leave the water off, we would have had clean clothes.

Blessing 5: I had just cleaned the basement the day before. We're not down there often this time of year, but it was in the playroom and it was a mess. It was clean, so no embarrassment factor when our neighbor came over to look at it with us. The vacuum cleaner was left under the vent and is what caught my husband's attention - the plinking sound. He never would have noticed otherwise - he was wearing shoes. Me in my socks, noticed right away.

Blessing 6: A friend had his basement flood last summer. While not a blessing in and of itself, he has experience and was able to give advice.

Blessing 7: The same friend dropped what he was doing, dropped his wife and kids off at home and headed to our house at 11:30 at night to help rip drywall out of the ceiling. And it's not like we live close.

Blessing 8: Our two oldest daughters slept in the same room last night - because we were busy moving furniture and carpet and didn't separate them. This may not seem big, but since they'll be sharing a room at some point before the new baby comes this summer, it's a big deal.

Blessing 9: I got a 'wild hair' last week and spent hours cleaning the office and spare bedroom downstairs. They were the last two rooms to get 'done' since we moved in last summer. They were clean enough that we could get to the water shutoff [in the spare bedroom] easily and had room for furniture and toys from the playroom.

Blessing 10: It doesn't look like the wall is wet - just that part of the ceiling. The pad under the carpet is toast, but the carpet itself seemed to dry out okay.

Blessing 11: We have a hole in the floor of that room that didn't get covered when they laid the carpet before we moved in. We had to pull up that carpet anyway to put the cover on that the construction guy finally got to us last week. So rather than pulling up two sections of carpet, it's just one.

Blessing 12: We talked about 'well, if we hadn't moved last summer, this wouldn't have happened' thing. So many good things have happened to us because of this move. Our oldest daughter is in a better school, making friends and playing soccer. We're making new friends. We had two computers fixed for $32 - the price of parts [more memory for the desktop, taking a laptop with no screen and combining it with a laptop with no hard drive] by our neighbor who owns his own computer business.

The same ice storm that likely caused this would have cost us THOUSANDS at our old house. The power was out for 10 days instead of 3. No fireplace to try to help keep the house from freezing. We would have spent much longer at my brother-in-law's house 45 minutes away. That house lost one tree and part of two others - one of them onto the fence and neighbor's shed. The other neighbor's trees probably would have landed on our van - we wouldn't have thought to move them and those trees fell early. It probably had some plumbing issues of it's own and possibly needed a new weather head too.

I think that last one counts as more than one blessing. No, we wouldn't have planned to stay up until after 2 last night ripping drywall out of the ceiling [okay, I didn't do any of that, but I am 5 months pregnant and stayed up to talk with my husband and our friend while they did it], but it's going to be okay.

We have our blessings and that's enough.