Bless gas fireplaces and wonderful husbands..

The object of my attention pictured above has been the kids and I's main heat source this past week. Yep, I jinxed us. In the previous blog I went on and on gushing about how Mike had fixed our furnace and it was running great. Well, to give him credit, Mike DID fix it, it just broke again. This time for good. The decrepit, antique piece of junk finally kicked the bucket. And since it is such an old piece of crap (22 years old, to be exact) they don't make parts for it anymore. Not a one. After futilely looking for a few days for the one teeny piece we need, to no avail, we finally had to come to terms with the fact that we need to replace it.. Crap. This was NOT in the budget. We just put a new roof on for crying out loud!!! Sorry. Had to get that out. Oh the joys of being a homeowner..

And wouldn't you just know it, the dang thing decided to break during the one week Mike was gone on a work trip. Yep! He left Sunday afternoon and the hunk of junk died Sunday night. Gotta love it. Luckily we had the gas fireplace, which did a phenomenal job of keeping the house pretty warm! And thanks to the generosity of some great neighbors, we had a few space heaters upstairs for when we were sleeping. So the kids and I made out alright for the week while we waited for the new furnace to get installed. (not so much, I think, for our future gas and electric bills, however..) Poor Mike.. I know he was probably having fits being away and unable to do anything during all of this. So much so that he sent us flowers with the the message "Hang in there Babe, I'll be home soon." Have I mentioned how much I love that man??

My little bouquet with my favorite, daisies. Notice the fire in the background..

and the kids flowers, pink roses for the girls and a red carnation for Mikey.. The girls, of course, loved them. When I gave Mikey his I got an "AAaaawwWWW.. NooOO.. I want a boy toy!!"