Day 270

We were planning on getting up early this morning. My uncle and aunt from California are at my parents house. And we were going to give Christmas a second try this weekend. Jonathan got up a bit earlier then I expected, but I thought he was just going to use the restroom and put a log or two on the fire. So I stayed warm and snuggled under the blankets. Then he came into the bedroom and said, "We have a problem." as he turned on the light and started putting on his shoes. In my half asleep state, I saw him looking at the floor in the corner and thought "Oh, no.... now what." I was thinking there must be some other animal in our house. But not that "lucky". It seems that during the night (-20 temps) the pipes froze. We have water nowhere in the house. So we got dressed and headed down to the basement so check it out. Jonathan got the heat gun and started to warm the pipes where they come into the house. While he did that I made a couple of trips up to second floor and back down to the basement, checking to see if the water had started to run. It actually only took few minutes to get the water running again.

But this seems to be only the start of our problems today. We also have discovered, (by the water running down the wall in the basement) that the drain has also frozen and has a crack in the ancient cast iron pipe. Jonathan has made a trip to Walmart to get another little space heater and some supplies to see if we can get that to thaw out as well.

Christmas or rip the walls down to find out where the water is leaking from the drain. Which would you choose? Well the day is still early, it is only 7:30 a.m. And we have no idea what we can do yet. I will have to update you later.

Day 268 - 269

Jonathan stayed home from work on Thursday and Friday. Schools were closed due to blowing snow and weather so darn cold that nothing alive should be outside on Thursday and Friday. With all of us home you would think we could work on something. But mostly it was too cold to leave the fire. So we snuggled, watched some movies and tried to stay warm. We are really glad for the insulation and are just hoping that weather people are right and the temperatures get above 0 next week.

Stay warm everyone. Put another log on the fire. :D

Day 267

Snowing, snowing, and so to be blowing.

Six more inches of snow are supposed to be coming our way today. Schools in the area have been canceled again. If this keeps up all of the kids will be going to school until July this summer.

The kids and I brought in a huge load of wood. I am hoping it will get us by for a few days. The high temps for the next two days are 0 and -1 degrees. I don't even want to say what the lows are forecast for us. Right now we are quite warm and cozy by the fire. We amazingly had it up to 72 degrees in here. :D I think all of our new insulation in the ceiling is helping.

Day 266

Global Warming

So who out there has some of that Global Warming? We could really use some of that around here. As I sat down here to write, it is -9 outside.

I think that whoever thought up Global Warming has gotten something seriously wrong. And I am not just talking about this winter. During the summer the kids would always want to go to the swimming pool. Everytime that we did, I would stand there in that water and wonder what was wrong with summer I was I freezing and this was in July and August the hottest parts of summer. I remember summers where you would just lay still and hope that there was any kind of breeze. But not this summer. I think we only had the a/c on just a couple of days.... and there were actually days that I felt cold, but it was just stupid to think about turning the heat on. And now winter.... HA, even before winter, just in the 'fall' we have gotten so much snow and so many days of below 0 temps that it is hard to believe.

So if there is anyone out there who has Global Warming, please send it our way. But as far as I am concern, I am more worried about Global Cooling.

Day 264

Jonathan got Grandma's heater hooked up in the basement. It seems to be able to keep it at least 40 degrees in there with these terrible cold outside temperatures. So that is very good.

We had a bit of excitement this afternoon. Merlin (our cat) has been going up to third floor alot. He likes it up there, but he also uses it as his hunting grounds. There are sometimes birds and bats up there. The last few days, I have been hearing sounds of a bird. But I haven't gone up to explore, as we have all of the windows covered with plastic I can't get them to go outside. So it will just have to find it's own way out or have fun with Merlin. The only thing I am slightly worried about is that when Merlin comes back down to second floor he opens the door. If we don't get out there to close the door, maybe the bird will come down. Well, now you might be able to guess at what our excitement was...

Jonathan was in the basement working on the heater, and the kids and I were in the tower room. I heard the bird, and it sounded like it was closer. So I went and peeked out the door. Sure enough the third floor door was open and Merlin was guarding the wall. The noises were clearing coming from behind this piece of drywall. So I headed down to the basement to get Jonathan.

Well, what we had was not a bird. It was a squirrel. As Jonathan was trying to get it. The squirrel went through the wall (like Merlin does) into the tower room. It walked right past the kids and went to hide in the corner. Merlin wanted to chase it. So I grabbed him and locked him in the bathroom as Jonathan chased the squirrel around the room. He finally did get it and carried it outside. When he put it down, he said it ran across the street as fast as it could.

Day 263

Jonathan and Dad worked on getting Grandma's old gas heater set up in the basement. Wow I hope that works. I am really getting tired of carrying those 40 lb bags of pellets. And of course paying for all of those pellets is getting really hard to do. It is hard to believe that we are only 12 days into winter. I hope that spring is as early as winter was this year. Sunny and 60 by February 1 sounds pretty good to me. ;)

They didn't quite get the stove hooked up. But it does work. So we should be able to have it up and running very soon. But get the rest of the insulation up in the tower room ceiling. YAY!

Day 262

Happy New Year!

Happy Anniversary Eva and Luis!

Last night we let the kids stay up, and we watched the Lord of the Rings. We only made it through the first two movies. Ella was excited because this was the first year she made it to 12:00. Zeb made it also. But little Melinda closed her eyes sometime during the second movie.

Mom and Dad came over this afternoon. We put up some insulation up in the tower room ceiling. We want to be warmer.