Hi all! I'm a gardening noob-- I hope it's okay to ask for help here.

After growing marigolds and sunflowers from seeds for years, I decided that instead of buying plants from the local nursery, I would try growing some favorites from seeds myself. I started a gardening journal, did research about what would do well in my zone/what would flourish in the conditions of my particular yard (and what wouldn't be too much of a challenge for a beginner), gathered together seeds, prepared an appropriate seed starting soil, etc. I thought it would be okay to start them outside because of how the weather has been, so I bought a couple of those Jiffy seed starter packs (with the biodegradable cells and the plastic "greenhouse" dome), and off we went. Everything was going relatively well...

...and then it wasn't. I know that all of my meticulous planning/research isn't worth a single solitary thing in the face of nature's whims, but I'm still disappointed/mad at myself that things took such a turn. Temperatures suddenly got much colder, and then over the past three days we've had rain that didn't really let up at all, spanning from a constant drizzle to a torrential downpour, and back again. I went to my local nursery when I saw the impending weather report, and everyone told me not to bring the seedlings inside, that they had to stay outside regardless of the sudden change of weather because I decided to start them out there, and that I shouldn't recover them. I moved all of the trays to a sheltered place (under a trellis with very thick and old Wisteria on it), but I was still outside constantly trying to empty the plastic trays that the cells were sitting in. (That became extremely risky, and almost a fool's errand, as the biodegradable "cells" were barely staying together by the end; the last time I tried to move one, it actually disintegrated in my hand.)

Well, as of this morning, I've lost over half of my seedlings-- and that could be because of something I've been doing wrong all along, or because of the sudden cold & rain, but whatever the case may be, they've dampened off or simply vanished. There has been sun today-- thank goodness!-- but all of the soil is completely waterlogged, and I'm still having to periodically (and very carefully) empty out water from the trays. The seedlings that survived don't look too great, and some that were upright this morning look to be keeling over as of five minutes ago.

I don't think most of my seedlings even have their first true leaves yet, but...I mean, I've got to get them out of that cold, waterlogged soil, right? I was all set to transplant the survivors, but something stopped me, and I figured I would come here.

I'm sorry for such a long & rambling post; I just feel really badly about this. Maybe I did do something wrong from the get-go; I keep thinking that three days of cold rain shouldn't have necessarily been enough to completely wreak havoc on tiny seedlings, if they had been in a good place to begin with.