Rio Camarie

Midland has gotten a TON of rain this year. You wouldn't think we were in West Texas. This was Wednesday night about 2 a.m. Our neighbor called us and said water was coming in his garage, we might need to get up and look and see if it was coming in our House! About two years ago it rained less than this and it came in our back door. Ronny had to dig a trench from the back yard to the front drive way so the water would drain off. He dug that trench in Record Time!!! : ) Our back yard is very unlevel and slopes to the house, which we plan to fix very soon. But this year, about 4-5 months ago we decided to put down some white stone to the back gate, which Ronny wanted to bury in the ground. So we dug this trench, hole, river, pond...what ever it shall be called now, but we haven't put the rock in because we need to level the rest of the yard. So the trench has remained, and it has SAVED us at least 4 times from flooding our patio and coming in our house. See the picture above. I kidded Terry & LaQuita that we were digging a pond, it's really a river!!

We just took out a loan to do some improvements on our house and the loan company said we had to have flood insurance because we were in a flood zone. This was less than 2 weeks ago! We use to be in the flood zone, but only the sidewalk and some of my front yard is in it now so we argued with her about that and we won. Flood insurance has gone from $250/year 10 years ago to $1400/year now!! So when we got up Wed night we were AMAZED at how high the water was, it got in our garage a little over half way. Ronny & I sat out on the front porch watching it pour down rain and the water rising and rolling down our street. The water in the street was over the curbs and up in our yard about half way as well as our neighbors across the street. We both looked at each other and said, "We Might Should Have Gotten that Flood Insurance!" Thankfully it didn't get in the house. We hope this is as close as we come to a flood in this 100 years...we'll keep our trench in the back yard for a while, we might need to invest in some sand bags & sand. We are ready for some sunny days, not HOT, just sunny and dry so we can dry out a little bit!