Mayville home gets a bit crowded thanks to flood
By DeAnne Hilgers
The Forum
Dr. Robert and Kimberly Lauf of Mayville, N.D., have turned their four-bedroom home into a shelter for flood victims that has included four adults, a set of triplets, four single children and Gus, the Chinese pug.

In the past two weeks, they have suffered through the flu, chicken pox and Gus in heat. Meals are an assembly line where the children, ages 2 through 8, go first and adults pick up what’s left.

Breakfast consists of two dozen muffins, a loaf of bread for French toast, a quart of orange juice, a quart of apple juice and half a gallon of milk.

"We never leave the counter or sink," Kimberly Lauf says. "Someone’s always eating or getting cleaned up."

The shelter opened April 19, when she called her friend, Lori Bothun, in Grand Forks, N.D., as the Red River waters rose. The Bothuns could stay with them, Lauf said.

By the end of the day, Bothun, her neighbor, seven children and the dog arrived. Their husbands, stacking sandbags and starting pumps to save their homes, arrived two days later. The Bothuns’ neighbors found new digs on Sunday.

"It was just nuts here for a few days," Lauf says. "We just take each day one at a time."

They sleep in bunk beds, day beds and on the floor, up to seven in a bedroom.

The children’s baths are en masse, boys separate from the girls. That’s when the mothers discovered one of the girls has chicken pox.

On Sunday, the triplets came down with the flu.

"We’ve been washing up barf sheets for three nights," Lauf says.

People magazine interviewed them Sunday, arriving half an hour before church. It was an improvement from the magazine’s original request to cover breakfast starting at 7:30 a.m., Lauf says. The story is scheduled to run Monday.

The Bothuns, whose home was saved, hope to return in a week to open Paul Bothun’s dental office.

"We’re going to be sad when they go," Lauf says. "We’re having fun."