It started at 7:10 A.M.  I had worked the evening before and the kids were letting me sleep in a little.  Nigel came kindly to my door, “Mom.  I’m sorry to wake you up, but we have a very serious emergency.”
I asked for more details.  He was so calm.
”There is water leaking everywhere from the basement ceiling.”
I leapt out of bed, exclaiming, “Grab every bucket you can find!” as I looked for my glasses.
”A bucket won’t help,” he said calmly.
I ran down the stairs, into the laundry room, dumped out two buckets of rags and cleaners and ran down the basement stairs and immediately thought, “What did I think I was going to do with these buckets?”

They are so calm in the video!  I was recording it as Stewart called John lest John say something like, “Grab every bucket you can find.”
He directed me how to turn off the water as he hurried to his car to head home.

The kids and I found the culprit.

It was remarkably easy to clean up, considering.
My initial praise was that Stewart HEARD the water leaking from the kitchen and investigated.  Then I was touched that they tried to address it without waking me. 
Then – about an hour later it dawned on me.  Up until four days prior AND for the last few WEEKS that table had been FULL of school books.  Thousands of dollars of school books had been on that table.  It could have been SO much worse.  My sewing machine had also been on there. 

My friend Jackie suggested renting a fan from Home Depot.  It was $28 for the day and worked fabulously after we’d used every last towel in the house to soak up most of the water.

Oh – and just because we like to keep things fun…  our A/C died the same day.