January Recap

The new year started beautifully.

Jer had the week between Christmas and New Years off.

I decided that we had been so busy during the last few weeks,

that I wanted two days of nothing, no cleaning, no chores, etc.

So we had a Harry Potter marathon sleepover,

For Christmas, Santa brought us the whole Harry Potter set.

We set up camp in the family room

with all of the leftover Christmas goodies

Trying to watch a movie with little brother :)

 

Jer and Sam went on a scout campout over the winter break

and the weather was warm enough for park dates and walks 

Drew really wanted to go with daddy,

he tried to sneak away in his camping pack

 Nate waiting anxiously to go to a birthday party...

he was very proud of the wrapping paper he decorated himself 

 

Drew discovered Thomas...

and became obsessed with trains

 

But the beautiful weather was too good to last. 

This January we were Frozen.

and I'm not talking about the Disney kind. 

I'm not much of a winter girl,

(I still claim Snow is a four letter word).

It started with multiple days with temperatures below zero

and wind chills with 15-20 degrees below.

 

They cancelled school on those days

it was too cold for the kids to wait at the bus stop.

After the kids went back to school, Jer got the flu,

then Sam got the flu, then we had more snow days and more sick days. 

It was 6 weeks from the last day of school/work before winter break began

until we finally had a "normal day" with everyone back to school.

 

As if the freezing temperatures weren't bad enough,

we installed a new Heater/Air conditioner last summer

So when our new heater went out on the three coldest nights of the year,

I was pretty unhappy.

Each morning when we woke up, it was freezing inside,

I would call the repair guys, and of course everyone else

was having a heater malfunction as well

so they couldn't come until later in the afternoon. 

Around lunch time our heater would start working again,

so when the repair men came they couldn't trouble shoot. 

They would leave and then around 8 pm, the heater would quit again.

Finally on the third morning, they sent someone out early.

We discovered the outside vent was freezing over due to

the extreme temperatures during the night.

I worried a lot about our pipes and didn't get much sleep on those nights.

 There were a lot of freezing pipes in the area, luckily ours were ok,

but our church building, which is currently being renovated,

had some considerable damage.

But that is a another chapter for another day

in the story of the winter that would never end.