Merry Christmas!

By that I also mean Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Hanukkah and Happy Festivus Day, Krampus Night, Las Posadas, Winter Solstice, St. Lucia Day, and St. Nickolas Day as you like. I hope you were able to enjoy togetherness, joy and good health on whatever winter holiday makes your heart sing and with your chosen family and friends.

We did our usual Christmas fun again this year. Peggy and her family including whichever of her kids are available, come to our house for Christmas Eve. We eat and laugh and talk and open presents. This year we also played a fun game with $10 gift cards. The littles, who range in age from 8 to 12, played with us and we all had a huge laugh. It was great. Then Peggy and her family went home and my kids and grandkids spend the night so we can open presents on Christmas morning. All the food is prepared for Christmas Eve so we just nibble on leftovers for Christmas. It works out well.

The spanner in the works this year was the freezing cold. We realized on Friday morning that our first floor heater was not working to it's full potential. It could maintain a temperature of only 60 degrees. Our bedroom was as cold as the kitchen and living room but the down comforter kept us nicely warm at night. We put a pot of water to boil on the stove and opened up the ovens as they cooled off from cooking. Our furnace guy come out on Saturday and found he couldn't fix the heater without a couple of new parts which he wouldn't be able to get until Tuesday. We would just have to live with the chilly temperature. With 12 additional people in the living room later in the day, the temperature was fine.

Then, just for the fun of it, two pipes burst on the morning of Christmas Eve. We turned the water on and off throughout the day. When our kids arrived in the evening, our wonderful son-in-law cut off and capped the pipe we knew was busted. That's when we realized there was a second break somewhere. So the practice of turning the water on and off continued through the weekend and into Monday morning. 

Monday morning I called the plumbers. They arrived and managed to repair our broken pipes in under 45 minutes. We could have showers and wash some clothes and run the dishwasher. It was glorious.

I haven't heard the final word on our heater yet. I'm hoping the parts were available and we can have it fixed rather than having to replace it. Fortunately, the A/C part of the system is working great so when the temperatures rise into the upper 80's again, we'll have the necessary cooling available.