Freezing

It has been really cold here lately... not today, today it is a glorious 52... Maggie came in from outside and said "I feel like I went to Hawaii." But last Saturday was a different story: a pipe in the bathroom froze and burst. Luckily, Chris was home and turned the water off right away. We called maintenance and they said they would put us on a very long list of emergencies for the day. They showed up just as we were discussing where we were going to shower/eat/use the facilities. This was pretty inconvenient, but having maintenance people come to the house is always a little fun for Christopher. He gets to follow them around and talk to them about how things work. Here is a picture of the pipe - the plumber admonished us several times to let the faucet drip during cold weather and we promised we would. But, we didn't. So, on Wednesday morning the pipes were frozen again...Chris said to call because it is a quick fix, but I did NOT want to call and say that we had a frozen pipe, probably in the same location. So we turned the faucet on hot (where a little drip was dripping) and waited... I was so nervous that it would burst again before the ice melted - but we made it. The faucet has been dripping ever since. Here is one of Paige's favorite spots. She is probably yelling in this picture to have someone come and read to her. I can't decide what she likes more: reading books or pulling books off the shelves. I know what I like more and it's not picking up all of her and some of her sister's books several times a day. Today, I just left them and will leave them until bedtime, when I can enlist the help of her 2 older sisters.
Maggie took the picture below at my request - Paige is wearing hand-me-downs of Elizabeth's that Sharron sent at Christmas. (When I washed the dress that Ashlee is wearing this week, I cut the ties off - neither of my girls will ever leave them tied and there is a man at church that every time they come with a tie hanging down tries to tie it for them. Plus it looks like we're total slackers who don't know how to dress our kids) Just in case you read this Elizabeth, we got several compliments on your dress! Thank-You! Last thing: since Christopher has left the squadron for the wing, he has had more interesting desk duties. Yesterday and today, he is sitting on Court Marshall Duty and I can't wait for him to come home and tell me all about it. It was KILLING me last night that he couldn't talk about it. I want all the details, what the guy did, how they reached the verdict, did he make eye contact, is he sorry, were his parents there, who were the witnesses, did they get to examine any evidence...I want to know. And last weekend he got to play host to a couple of crews passing through from the Italian Air Force. As a thank-you, they gave him the following gifts. We were teasing the girls that the wine would be ok because after all it's just grape juice, Maggie was scandalized, Ashlee seemed to take us at our word. It's going to the neighbors. It's the statue I don't know what to do with. Maggie and I opened the box that it came in together and she turned a few shades pink and left the room because the guy has all his business hanging out.(that's a piece of paper towel). There is no way that Chris will let me throw him out...I figure if I leave him out for a week or two, he'll let me put him in the closet with the other stuff we don't know what to do with!

Oh, and I did let the girls stay home to watch the Inauguration - but it turns out that both of their classes watched it at school. I told Chris the other night that President Obama has already satisfied any expectation/hope that I had of his Presidency by issuing the order to close Guantanimo and stating unequivocally that the U.S. will not engage in torture - reason enough to have voted for him, in my humble opinion. Plus, the closing prayer - we would never have gotten anything like that with any of the other candidates. The girls and I have been saying it to each other ever since...