Kevin and I spent Tuesday evening at his mom's house doing his small family Christmas. We had a wonderful dinner and enjoyed spending special time with our family. However, the fun times ended when we got home. As Kevin was walking down the hall by the guest rooms and bathroom, he noticed that his feet were getting wet. After further investigation, it was determined that we had a leak in a pipe leading from our hot water heater. So instead of spending the rest of the evening giving each other our stockings, as planned, we had more urgent matters to handle (see pictures below). We cleaned up the big mess (to the best of our ability with limited resources), put a fan blowing on what was left, and turned off the hot water heater so it wouldn't continue to leak overnight, as we were leaving at 8am the following morning for Temple.
Oh, you think that looks like hard work? Well it gets better. When we woke up the next morning to get ready to leave, I ran over to that side of the house to feel the carpet. It was EVEN SQUISHIER!!! Apparantly we had not done a good job diagnosing and stopping the problem the night before. So we cleaned again, and ran 2 hours late for Christmas Eve festivities.
Okay, the bad part is over. Let's talk about Christmas!!!
We arrived in Temple and went to his Aunt Peaches' house, who took us to lunch. We spent a good portion of the afternoon with her, and she gave me some pickles that she jars herself when we left! Then we headed to his Town Granny's house for Christmas with his extended family on his mom's side. Afterwards, we headed to his Memommie's house to do our Christmas with her. By the time we left Temple and drove to College Station, it was after midnight!
We woke up and had Christmas morning with my family. We did something a little different this year. We cut out a lot of our big gift giving and just did small, meaningful things for each other. Here, my Granny and Grandaddy are opening the ornaments we had made for their 50th wedding anniversary!
And here, my mom and dad are opening the ornaments we had made for their 30th wedding anniversary!
My mom played "Santa," handing out the gifts. I think this is such a cute picture of her!
Lindsay enjoyed her gifts, too! Here, she's opening a nice reed diffuser from us:
I think Kevin enjoyed himself as well, after the underwear was opened, put away, and forgotten.
My Uncle Larry, Aunt Tina, and cousin Justin spent the time that they weren't opening presents (which was a lot of Uncle Larry, ;) ) cracking jokes and amusing us with their wittiness.
Kevin and I are lucky that our family loves our dogs (almost) as much as we do! They got as many presents as we did! And don't you think for a second that they didn't understand "present" and/or know how to open them by themselves! Here, they're enjoying one of their gifts. They also got gourmet (and iced/decorated) cookies! In the following picture, you can see Bella in her "Naughty or Nice" shirt. Everyone voted on naughty, due to the incessant barking.
Also, we each brought a valuable, desireable gift for a Chinese gift exchange. I brought this AWESOME electric foot massager with heat and all these little metal balls that rotate around. Heaven. I told Kevin when I bought it that I was GOING to come home with my own present, even if it meant being ruthless (sorry Aunt Tina). Needless to say, the foot massager is mine. I teach in heels every day!!!
We arrived home this morning shortly before 11am, and found DRY CARPET!!! Apparantly we turned off the right thing this time. Kevin was about to head to Lowe's to figure out what he needed to buy to repair the pipes when we were presented with a HUGE blessing. Our neighbor was outside, and it turns out that he USED TO BE A PLUMBER! This was amazing, since we had already tried to call a few plumbers with no success. He helped Kevin figure out what to do, and then Kevin took care of it! He is an AMAZING handy-man! He even took on a few other projects while he was in the mood, like hanging me a bar for laundry in the utility room, replacing and upgrading our heater/AC control, and changing out a few outlet covers. I was so happy!
While Kevin was busy being a handy-man, I was un-decorating, cleaning, and organizing like a MAD woman. We already have Christmas decorations down, put away, and replaced with my standard decor. It feels good.
Later in the week we'll be heading to Houston for New Year's Eve, which should be a blast. I'll keep you posted!
2 comments:
That really sucks, but I'm glad you got it figured out and fixed!
We just had a hot water leak UNDER our floor a few months ago, so the floor was all hot and they had to take up the carpet then drill the foundation. Very expensive. THEN, after that, we got a gas bill for another $400 because the hot water had been running for that long!! The joys of home ownership.
Merry Christmas, Meagan!!!
Wow-- all kinds of adventures!! :-) I have that same massager in my classroom! hehe. :-)
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