The One in Which There was Sputtering and Clanking

I can hardly believe that it has been nearly a month since I bored you to tears with random details of my life, but, alas, it has and I feel the need to get back to the blogging world.
Happy New Year to each of you! I hope that you had a wonderful holiday season. We certainly had a great festive one ourselves. On the great tour of the Midwest we were able to see lots of family on both sides, some dear old friends and partake in lots of very yummy food. Most importantly we were able to participate in worship and the celebration of the Reason for the Season as a family.

In general we had good traveling weather--which I know there are safety concerns, etc. but good weather (translation--conditions that allow to at least adhere to the speed limit) is crucial when traveling with a potty training two year old. On a side note, I am absolutely uncertain how anyone traveled with kids any distance greater than two hours before the invention of the portable DVD player. (Sshh! Is it just me, or do you hear the angels singing the Hallelujah chorus?)

Princess was so good, considering all the commotion of traveling, gift exchanges, random schedules. And while she did not make the duration of the trip without a "potty accident"--of the couple that she had none were in the confines of the truck, thankfully! Did I mention the last leg of the tour was an eight hour drive?

Anywhoo, it's always good to be home and begin the migration back to some routine and order. Even if it means laundry, cooking and dishes. It's good. And the transition back to normalcy was going so well until yesterday.

Yesterday, while Princess Pigtails was devouring (and I mean DEVOURING) her breakfast an absolutely scarily horrendous noise started coming out the heat vents. The noise which resembled a lawn mower in a blender was soon followed by a smell which I can only describe as remarkably similiar to the stench of the black cloud that surrounded the last 1983 Dodge Omni I saw. Any way, after several phone calls to Hubs--which involved holding the phone to the vents and running up and down the stairs to the furnace--we determined that someone should be called to come and look at it--because it was obvious that my fix of just shutting the furnace off by flipping the breaker was not going to be the long term solution. It was 18 degrees here and wicked winds--balmy compared to the high of 4 degrees on Wednesday. So, at 4:45 yesterday the repair man left and we were back on our way to the tropical (relative) 68 degrees that we normally keep it...

And I must say that Hubs was a darling to come home from work and be here with us. I really don't enjoy having to deal with the contractors. Especially when something is broken--because I spend most of the time on the phone relaying what the contractor is saying or asking Hubs questions that the service person is asking me. Apparently, the meaning of the highly specific terms of "thingy wahs" and "doodads" are not a part of their skilled training.

Hopefully, that is the last service call of 2008. And may yours be incident free as well! Happy New Year!