Grateful for small things...

You never know how much you miss something until it is gone. On Saturday, we had a leak from our master bathroom shower head, which I so bravely thought that I could fix on my own. I shut off the water to house and took the head and faucet apart to replace the entire setup and I left for Lowes to retrieve some parts. Unbeknownst to me, water continued to flow in a tiny stream for an hour while at Lowes. We discovered this because of wet spots on the ceiling of our living room, which fortunately only ended up being maybe 6-8" in diameter and can probably paint over.

After realizing that I was in above my head, I called Roto Rooter to fix my mess. In the mean time, the water finally stopped flowing and by the time the plumber got to our house at 9pm on Saturday, during the OSU-USC debacle, there was nothing they could do except cut a hole in the wall and put shut off valves on the shower line so we could turn the water back on to the rest of the house for $300 and come back on Monday and replace the facet for another $500. We opted to "rough it" for a day and a half and go without water. After all of this, our ice maker started making crazy sounds, so we had to shut off the fridge.

Thankfully, we have SUPER-GREAT family and friends who allowed us to store food and retrieve water, use their bathrooms and showers and provide dinner for us just to make life a little easier when both Jen and I felt at our wits-end, especially if you knew about all of the other repairs that we have needed to make over the last month or so. We feel truly blessed to have people around us to help in a time of need.

What finally happened you ask...Roto Rooter came back today to fix the faucet and after 4 hours, a hole in our spare room wall about 8"x14" and a large sum of money, we have a faucet, shower head that doesn't leak and WATER--our coworkers will be grateful for that!

Finally, I want to thank Target for making us feel at home.

The Split Club

So Emily loves to dance... she has just started her 7th dancing season and despite many efforts on our part to get her involved in other activites, she continues to return to dancing. Em has many natural talents in a variety of areas... flexibility isn't one of them. She's never been overly bendy or flexible and some basic ballet moves (namely the splits) have been entirely out of reach because of her lack of flexibility. Last year her dance teachers started The Split Club -- each month they would allow the girls to "test" for entrance into this illustrious club, which has 3 levels: Bronze, Silver and... you guessed it, Gold. The ability to do one type of split (right, left or center) gets you to the first level and I'm sure you can figure out the advancement structure! Each month saw more and more girls added to the club list (posted prominently in the lobby of the studio) but no Emily... she just couldn't do it no matter how many stretches she did. There are also little rewards at each level -- a mini can of pop or a candy bar or something (yes, lets hype them all up on caffine and sugar!!) and I think the plan was to have a banana split party at the end of the year for the girls at the gold level (not sure if this actually happened)... Emily was far less interested in the rewards than the recognition of having her name on the list. It just didn't happen last season but she wanted it... oh how she wanted it.
Flash forward to this season... on the first night of class there it was... the split club poster... empty and ready for names. Em has been anxious. Last night was supposed to be the first test of the season... ... she stretched and practiced and was really close just before class started - but then it seemed as though maybe they had forgotten because they worked for almost 90 minutes on random ballet technique and general conditioning and still no splits testing. They decided to end with it I guess -- I was busy chatting so I didn't see her actually test but I turned around in time to see a HUGE grin on her little face and her teacher writing down her name... guess she made it! That kid was BEAMING -- so proud of herself... and a pretty proud mom too since I know how hard she's had to work to get there!

Great job Ems!!!! Welcome to The Split Club. Next challenge: Silver level.