Anne of Green Gables

So I am a little behind. I think you are supposed to read Anne when you are about 11 or 12. But I never did. So now Erin and I are reading them. I even bought myself a Kindle so I didn't have to borrow one from Eric anymore. I am loving the books and all the little messages that it teaches little (and in my case-big) girls.

I was reading Book 4 last night and came across a paragraph that made me laugh. Actually I laugh a lot while reading it, but this paragraph touched me more than the rest. She is writing a letter to her fiance, Gilbert.

"Gilbert, darling, don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let's dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!"

I am not adventurous and I am afraid of everything! So I just laughed when it got to the last part about the mention of twins. I found it hilarious that she lumps typhoid and twins into the same category as typhoid.

Proof that I am Nice

I get so frustrated when my pictures come out sideways. I wish I knew how to change it, but I don't.

We have HEAT!

A very nice lady from Southwest Gas came and restored our heat a few minutes ago. YEAH!!! We can all have hot showers tomorrow. It was kinda fun while it lasted. Tonight we had homemade pizza and a movie night in our bedroom. It wasn't too bad with the space heater, but I was tired of all 6 of us hanging out in my bed. The lady was so nice that when I asked her if she would be able to get the Park's house tonight, she didn't think so and it wasn't even on her list of houses. When I explained that they are an older couple and the husband has pneumonia, she immediately went down and turned on their gas.

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It is COLD!

Well, Mario wrapped the pipes really well last night so our pipes didn't freeze again. But we have no gas, therefore, no heat. Zach camped out in our room with the space heater and a sleeping bag. The other kids just slept with heating blankets in their rooms. I woke up to 65 degrees in my room and 58 degrees in the rest of the house. So, I am boiling water to wash dishes and to take sponge baths. Then I am leaving the house for a good part of the day to warm up. It may be several days before we get heat back, but at least it is supposed to start warming up this next week.

I am glad Erin and I are in the middle of reading the Anne of Green Gable books. It is hard to feel sorry for ourselves when we still have water and electric. Those people a century ago would laugh at us now for complaining.

No School

I never thought my kids would have a "snow day." But tomorrow school has been canceled because the cold front has caused us to not have heat. Too bad there's no snow to go with the cold.

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Erin and Braces

Erin has been telling me for a couple years that she doesn't want braces. But I knew that she would regret the decision later. Recently, her last baby tooth fell out, so she said, "Well I guess it is time for braces." I was shocked. She has been trying to hold on to those baby teeth as long as possible so she wouldn't have to get braces. But now it seemed that she was kind of excited about the prospect of braces. It probably doesn't hurt that her friends are all starting to get them. So now it is the "cool" thing to do. I took her into my orthodontist yesterday and he is going to start the process today. Erin didn't even want to wait until next week to get started. So I think she is trying to act like she doesn't want them, but deep down inside, she is excited.

Frozen Pipes

So I see a couple of my neighbors preparing for the deep freeze that was forecasted to hit us. I forgot to tell Mario until last night when he is crawling into bed at about 8:30 because he has to be up at 4 for an important conference call at work. He didn't think the pipes would freeze and so he drifted off to sleep. I recall my dad telling me recently that we didn't have anything to worry about here in Arizona about freezing pipes. So I too drifted off to sleep.

Fast forward to 4 am this morning and Mario comes into the room, turns on the bathroom light and when I enquire why, he says, "We have no water." Great! So now I am up at 4 am trying to research online what to do. We are from Florida. We don't know anything about frozen pipes!

We may have not been prepared with the pipes, but at least we were prepared with water storage. I quickly went to the garage, removed all the junk on top of our huge water barrels and began to boil water to use for our pipes.

Then I called my dad to tell him he was wrong, pipes do freeze here. He offered some suggestions which worked immediately to clear the frozen pipes. I felt so bad for Mario having to leave. I know he didn't want to leave me early this morning with no running water to fend for myself and the kids.

It looks like the pipe leading to the sprinklers has a leak so we do have some damage and I don't look forward to telling the landlord that we didn't prepare his pipes last night. My dad said it was his responsibility to cover the pipes, but I think we should have taken care of it. Lesson learned for next time. At least I had my water storage ready.

Update: Even those that covered their pipes had them frozen. In fact, many still don't have water. So I think I was very lucky to know about the problem at 4 am so I could fix it before it froze any further. Now are gas is out also, so no heat in the whole area. Maybe school will be canceled tomorrow.