Springtime Rain

In the middle of the night on Monday this week, Pete and I woke up to some crazy thunder and lightning at about 2:00 am. Having dealt with some leaky windows in our house during a rainstorm a few days before, we decided to get out of bed and check the weather. We were faced with this:

Once we shored up the water that was coming in the windows on one side of the house, we (Pete) had to tackle the odd little cubby hole located in our upstairs hallway. We're not exactly what the original intention of this thing was, but it seems that the little doorway opens up to a tube that runs straight up to a large funnel on the roof. Water was pouring in! 

After the bucket filled up about 4 times in 15 minutes, we moved onto a larger container: 

The rain finally started to slow down and thankfully, this bucket never overflowed.  Here is a close-up of Pete's creative problem-solving:

Also, we finally got that backyard pool we've always wanted: