Trapped in My Apartment with Three Hyper Boys and One Novice Trumpet Player

We had our first school cancellation due to weather in nearly 3 years today. It started raining buckets late yesterday afternoon and is still raining. School has already been canceled for tomorrow.

Sadly, this incident has coincided with Margarita's first opportunity to bring home a trumpet from school. (the perfect storm, if you will) She is to master playing "Hot Cross Buns"; after today, I'm very confident she will achieve her goal. As if things weren't acoustically trying enough around here with her latest piano piece, "The Entertainer" and Julio's 5th Symphony by Beethoven.

Of course, Guapo was able to make it to work (even though he has the flu), he's like a postman-"neither rain nor sleet" or however that little saying goes; it was just him and one other guy who lives a block away. He called me on the way to the office, "I'm the ONLY car on the road, can you believe that?" Yes. Actually, I can. He had to do some fancy maneuvering (driving on sidewalks, on the wrong side of the road, crossing over dividers, and passing through small rivers) to make it to his office.

I don't blame him for the Herculean effort, being stuck in the house with the boys and the trumpet is enough to do most people in.

So, are you wondering how our house is holding up after all of that work (read: overpriced paint job) we had done in November?

Not so well.

Let's have a little look-see, shall we?

Here's part of the family room:

Another part of the family room:

Margarita's bedroom, this is dripping right down on her bed:

This is right above our TV and DVD player in my and Guapo's room (notice the washcloth on top of the DVD player):

And this is a new one, right above my side of the bed (ugggh!), bringing the percentage of bedrooms with water leaking directly onto the beds to 75%:

But poor Julio has it the worst.

He came into our room in the middle of the night to tell us it was raining on him. We told him to push his bed out of the way and go back to sleep (poor kid, we were still recovering from our sleepless Saturday night). He wasn't kidding; here's just a little part of his ceiling that is leaking:

and the remedy:

I actually had to add more containers as these weren't doing the trick, but I am too tired and lazy to take a new picture. (and just to clear Julio's cool name, he doesn't play with that little ride on car with the blocks; that belongs to Pedro. I have to store toys where I've got the space.)

Here's how much water they collected after only a few hours:

Finally, here's a picture of the lake this morning, you can see the huge amount of runoff water:

But even with the leaks, the restless kids, and the trumpet, I am very grateful to be safe, (relatively) dry, and with electricity and water and Internet service (knocking on wood). This is a storm that has caused landslides, serious flooding, and many deaths, and it just continues to rain...