well that didn't go as planned...

Well this weekend didn’t go exactly as planned. In fact it went nothing as planned. Turns out Western North Dakota is flooding, badly. My hubby is from Bismarck and his family still lives out there. They were facing the worst flooding they have ever seen so we drove out west to help out. We packed my saddles and tack in my pickup just incase the flooding wasn’t as bad as they said it was so if we had time we could run up to see Piney. This was not the case. We delt with sand bags from the moment we got there until about an hour before we left.


For those of you who have never fought a flood let me tell you. You aren’t missing much. In fact it is awful. At the end of the day you feel like you were hit by a bus, and then when you wake up in the morning you feel worse, like you were run hit by a bus then run over by a steam roller. It takes everything out of you. I.Hate.Sand. More now than ever. I’ve never been a beach person, in fact I prefer the mountains and I especially love the plains. I don’t like sand. I don’t like the feel of it nor do I like the smell of wet sand, none of it. I don’t like sand. I also don’t like heavy awkward to carry things. So Sand bags are a combination of all those things I don’t like. My hands don’t close properly anymore either. I carried a lot of bags. Not as many as my hubby or his family but I carried a lot. I also think I tied a million closed. Okay so maybe not a million but a lot. Fargo/Moorhead donated their left over sandbags to bismarck. I think they had a few million. I liked Fargo sandbags. They were roughly 15-20 pounds each. Bismarck sandbags were more like 30-40 pounds each. They hadn't quite figured out that lighter bags were better. But by monday they had figured it out and the bags were lighter... whew!

Pile of Sandbags, ready to be stacked

Bismarck is in danger of losing 1,000 homes. We did our best to save hubby’s home and hopefully our hard work paid off. Some men came though the yards to plan where a larger dike would go. They are planning on making one big continuous dike through the neighborhood. They said our dike was one of the best they had seen. Probably because our team of workers has put in many, many hours fighting the yearly flood we face each year in Fargo/Moorhead. They said most of the neighbor’s dikes were more than likely to fail, but if ours was solidly and well built. Yay us! But I’m just praying that the house will be saved. We hauled everything out of the basement as a safety precaution though. As more than likely there will be water down there.

Anyways I’m sick of sand. And I still miss my pony. I plan on posting some pictures of the sandbag fight but I’ll do that later when the thought of sandbagging doesn’t make me cringe!
But in the meantime, here are a few pics of Tucker from this weekend. Pooper and Diesel went to “Camp Grandma” for the weekend. They wanted a vacation away from Tucker anyways!



My co Pilot was alot of help most of the way out there.
He thinks my saddle is a great pillow.



The view ahead of me. I LOVE heading out west! if only the weather stayed like this.



Guard Dog Tucker. Making sure the dike was safe and secure




Exhausted from his adventures.