My sweet boys :-)
Saturday, February 2, 2013
THANK YOU
I am really slow this time at getting my thank you cards out from Christmas. It seems finding time to actually get to the post office has been terribly difficult for me. I at least have this photo to post as an electronic shout-out Thank You to appease the family until they get their hand-written notes :-)
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Sigh...
In January, after we return from our tour of visiting family, we have a pile of mail to sort through waiting for us. I always squirm as I open the credit card bills from December and Christmas. I don't worry too much, because I have a budget and I can cover them. In the same pile of mail, we always rejoice when we open Brian's check from his Christmas caroling gigs. Yeah! Additionally, this year we received a health refund that was totally unexpected. Double yea!
And then the weather here got warm...
And then the weather got cold...very cold...very, very cold.
I awoke in the morning to a chilly house. I went to turn on the faucet to brush my teeth and NO WATER. Shoot. As my parents say, "It's always something." I had to skedaddle out the door, so I left Brian in charge of trying to sort everything out. Unfortunately, it was a day where I am in class all day with no time to check back in to the situation at home. When I did make it back to the house, I was greeted with love from slightly smelly boys because we still had no water.
Brian had learned that it wasn't on the city's side of the meter, so it had to be near the meter or in our house. We had no water seeping out of the walls or puddling on the floor anywhere, so we suspected it wasn't a break anywhere. Brian set up our little electric heater near the meter just in case it was frozen, and still we had nothing. I felt along all the pipes I could see in the basement and none of them felt overly cold or frozen. It was 7 o'clock at night and I was at a total lost at what was wrong with the water situation in our house. I caved and called a local company who had a 24hour hotline.
The plumber on the phone thought it was likely a frozen pipe somewhere. I said we might as well wait until the morning since it was just going to get cold again that evening.
Day two without water and we were using baby wipes for washing up. The plumber was on his way to the house just as I was leaving for the morning. I got back home around 1pm and the plumbers (now there were 2) were still there = bad sign. Brian filled me in on the situation...
Plumber 1 shows up. Tamlin immediately says hello and informs him that he is a superhero. Jude squeals at him. Plumber 1 goes into the basement and beats around on the pipes for awhile. He comes back up and informs Brian that somewhere in the pipes is a clog. He thinks it might be something that came in through the city system because of a nearby rupture that happened recently. He says thinks it is mostly likely clogged at one of several junctions where the pipes narrow and gives an estimate of $1200. Ouch. Well, we got to have water, so Brian gives him the go ahead.
Plumber 1 begins cutting into the pipes, and discovers that it is frozen...completely frozen. Plumber 1 calls in plumber 2 for help since the frozen section is nearly 2 feet long. This is really odd since the frozen pipe is in our basement, which is still fairly warm. Plumber 2 suggests that they bring the pipe out more from the wall and replace the pipe with newer flexible ones to help prevent any freezing in the future. In the end, they replaced most of the water pipes in the basement with these newer ones. They wrapped up around 4pm and I handed over the credit card for the bill. Sigh...at least we had the checks first before this unexpected emergency :-)
We now have water again and Tamlin is still a superhero.
And then the weather here got warm...
And then the weather got cold...very cold...very, very cold.
I awoke in the morning to a chilly house. I went to turn on the faucet to brush my teeth and NO WATER. Shoot. As my parents say, "It's always something." I had to skedaddle out the door, so I left Brian in charge of trying to sort everything out. Unfortunately, it was a day where I am in class all day with no time to check back in to the situation at home. When I did make it back to the house, I was greeted with love from slightly smelly boys because we still had no water.
Brian had learned that it wasn't on the city's side of the meter, so it had to be near the meter or in our house. We had no water seeping out of the walls or puddling on the floor anywhere, so we suspected it wasn't a break anywhere. Brian set up our little electric heater near the meter just in case it was frozen, and still we had nothing. I felt along all the pipes I could see in the basement and none of them felt overly cold or frozen. It was 7 o'clock at night and I was at a total lost at what was wrong with the water situation in our house. I caved and called a local company who had a 24hour hotline.
The plumber on the phone thought it was likely a frozen pipe somewhere. I said we might as well wait until the morning since it was just going to get cold again that evening.
Day two without water and we were using baby wipes for washing up. The plumber was on his way to the house just as I was leaving for the morning. I got back home around 1pm and the plumbers (now there were 2) were still there = bad sign. Brian filled me in on the situation...
Plumber 1 shows up. Tamlin immediately says hello and informs him that he is a superhero. Jude squeals at him. Plumber 1 goes into the basement and beats around on the pipes for awhile. He comes back up and informs Brian that somewhere in the pipes is a clog. He thinks it might be something that came in through the city system because of a nearby rupture that happened recently. He says thinks it is mostly likely clogged at one of several junctions where the pipes narrow and gives an estimate of $1200. Ouch. Well, we got to have water, so Brian gives him the go ahead.
Plumber 1 begins cutting into the pipes, and discovers that it is frozen...completely frozen. Plumber 1 calls in plumber 2 for help since the frozen section is nearly 2 feet long. This is really odd since the frozen pipe is in our basement, which is still fairly warm. Plumber 2 suggests that they bring the pipe out more from the wall and replace the pipe with newer flexible ones to help prevent any freezing in the future. In the end, they replaced most of the water pipes in the basement with these newer ones. They wrapped up around 4pm and I handed over the credit card for the bill. Sigh...at least we had the checks first before this unexpected emergency :-)
We now have water again and Tamlin is still a superhero.
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