Brrrrrrrr!!

As fate would have it, a zone for our hot water heat went bad in the middle of the coldest stretch of weather in 14 years or something. The zone that no longer works is the one that controls the bedrooms upstairs, so sleeping has been chilly!

Since this exact thing happened 2 years ago, and back then we fixed it by using a space heater to heat the wall with the pipes in them, believing that the pipes were frozen. So we did the same thing this time, only...it didn't work. We still had to heat. WE tried for several days, but to no avail. So I decided that I would cut some holes into the wall in the playroom, trying to find the pipes that we thought were frozen. Turns out, there are no pipes in the wall...they must be redirected somewhere else! So now I have 4 holes in the wall, and it turns out a motor valve went bad! So there was no water moving in the zone!

So, we had the Service Plus guy come out to fix it, and he finds that the whole boiler is bad, expelling carbon monoxide like the car was parked and running in the basement! So things were very dangerous in our house! Praise God that He protected us!

So as I write this, we have new boiler being installed and I hope to be warm within the next few hours.

During all this, Em and I got to go on our first date since Italy, dining at a very nice restaurant in Minneapolis called Masa, an up-scale Mexican eatery. The food was good, stay away from the guacamole (no flavor) and the margaritas ($9 for ice and triple sec???)

The kids are doing well, with everyone having the sniffles and that's about it. With this cold snap, we have been unable to get out of the house much, and the kids are starting to get cabin fever, big time.

In the pictures above, you can see Isayas eating ice cream for the first time. He loved it! Many Ehtiopian kids don't, as the chill and creaminess of it is offsetting at first. But dove right in!

Also, in the picture with Joshy in the truck, please note that all precautions were taken to ensure his safey. No one was hurt in the taking of that picture.