Talitha, Cumi: Week of December 29 and January 5

Week of December 29:

Monday
Caleb and I went to Mexico to get some shopping done. Nothing real exciting.

Tuesday
Glenn and Leah came to visit! When they got here we went and had lunch at Cheddars, then Leah and I went to Target while the boys went to lame gun stores and went shooting. That evening we played a game and hung out until midnight. It was great to get to spend New Years Eve with them. Glenn kept us entertained for awhile by making up lyrics to randomness Caleb played on the guitar. Here's a little snippet of the ending of a song that had been about a squirrel.

Wednesday
We went to Aunt Rachel's house to spend some time with Caleb's family. Caleb and I had both ended up getting sick with colds. I had the worst sinus pressure I've ever had with a cold. It was even making my TMJ flare up and hurting my jaw. I've never had that problem before.

Liam getting some Grandma Donna snugs.

Thursday-Saturday
Caleb and I took it easy trying to get over our colds. Fortunately Liam slept a lot too within those few days and gave us time to recoup.

Sunday
It snowed overnight and made everything pretty slick Sunday morning. Caleb went up to the church to shovel and one of the deacons was up there as well. He told Caleb that he had talked with several people from church and there wouldn't be very many people showing up so we might as well cancel church. With us living so close it's hard for us to know how bad the roads are.

I was finally starting to feel better so I got caught up on laundry and dishes which was a good thing because....

Monday
Monday morning we woke up to frozen pipes, thanks to the -9º temperature. I got up around 6:30 with Liam and discovered it, and noticed that our furnace wasn't working right again. I woke Caleb up and he went under the house to try to see if he could thaw out the pipes. I reset the furnace and I had gone back to bed and woke up to the smell of something burning. It turns out that Caleb had taken a sawdust candle he had made and used it to try to thaw out the pipes. Nothing caught on fire, I was just smelling the burning sawdust. When that didn't work at thawing the pipes I called the property manager and the landlord was at our house within an hour and put a heater under the house. He said things should be thawed out quickly and to call him when they did. After about 2 1/2 hours, Caleb went outside and took another heater and a tarp to try to add more heat and keep it contained under the house. After another couple of hours we discovered that the furnace was still not keeping the house warm. I called the property manager again and the landlord showed up again shortly along with his son and a furnace man. The furnace guy put in a new thermostat and replaced some other part. The landlord put a salamander heater under the house and left that for awhile trying to continue to thaw out the pipes. Caleb's parents showed up and Tim had another Salamander heater that they also put under the house. After that still wasn't working they tried heating up the meter, and still nothing. Finally we ended up getting some water around 4ish. We were very fortunate to have a landlord who made sure we were being taken care of. Our furnace still doesn't work 100% of the time, but hopefully we will have fewer problems with it.

Brrr....

Tuesday
Tuesday night I went to bed before Caleb. I went into the bedroom and heard some noises coming from the ceiling so I wondered if maybe there was some snow melting off of the roof or something. I asked Caleb if there was roof right above our bedroom just because I couldn't remember exactly how our house was shaped. When he said there wasn't, I told him that he needed to come into the bedroom because I could hear something in the ceiling. When he came in he heard the noises too and went upstairs to check it out. He said that there is an area kind of like attic space right next to his office between the wall and where the roof slants. That probably doesn't make sense, but anyway, after he went up there I never heard the noise anymore. I'm hoping that he scared away whatever critter was up there.

Also, warmerish days turning into cold nights, along with a roof with no gutters makes for some massive icicles!

Thursday
I finished up some new pillow covers for our throw pillows. I made them out of some fleece blankets we got at Orscheln's on clearance. It only cost me a little over $2 to make four of them. I don't usually like working with fleece because it stretches so much, but I really like these covers.

Friday
We met up with some of Caleb's family in Mexico for dinner. I win mom-of-the-year award for accidentally letting my child chew on a dirty table. After dinner we went to Walmart and I found some clearance Christmas fabric for 86 cents/yard. I'm pretty stoked. I'll be making Christmas stockings!

Saturday
My parents came in town to visit Liam, and they claim they came to visit us too. ;-) We ended up staying in and watching a movie (really, we napped through it) and playing a game. It was good to get to spend some time with them.

More pics from the past couple of weeks:

Liam has discovered his feet. This cute little rump has become a common sight in our house.

Socks are even harder to keep on his tootsies now.

Liam is getting really close to rolling from his back to his belly. It looks like he is no longer allowed to take a magic blanket with him to nap in his swing again.