Yikes! It's cold (in the house)!

It's been a chilly 36 hours here in the van Poppel home. Sunday night, I noticed that the heater didn't seem to be heating as well as it usually does. The fan was blowing, but the air was not very warm. By 1:30 am Monday morning, the whole heating system didn't work and it was 64 degrees in our house. By 6 am it was 60 degrees. I called our landlord and she called her warranty company. They say that they can't get anyone to our house until the afternoon, between 1 and 5 pm! The kids and I go to the YMCA in the morning, eat lunch out and try not to get home till 1, hoping that the repair man will get to us sooner than later. Understandable the kids didn't want to take naps in their very cold rooms, so we all huddled under the comforter in my bedroom and watched TV. Ian fell asleep and Payton got bored. She went off to play.

I kept the oven on most of the afternoon because it usually helps warm up the kitchen. It didn't seem to help as much as I had hoped. Everyone was still dressed in a couple layers of clothing. I told Payton that we should bake something since the oven was on. She got all excited and retrieved 'her cookbook' from the shelf and started thumbing through the pages. She asked if we could make a football field cake. I had a cake mix, so I decided why not. The picture in the book had teddy bears for football players. We didn't have any on hand, so we used animal crackers instead. Payton helped with a lot of the decorations. She took the cake to school today :)

Anyway, the repairman got to our house around 4:15 p and said that the part he needed wasn't on the truck, so someone would have to come out tomorrow (but not him). I was pretty deflated after he said that. Facing another cold night did not sound too fun to me. Scott went to the store and got some space heaters for the kids' rooms. We all weathered the night remarkably well even though it was 57 degrees in the house when we got up this morning! I was so ready to get out of the house to take Payton to school and didn't want to go home. I had to stay close to home, of course, because we didn't know when the next repairman would get to our house. I went to a friend's house for about an hour and finally the repairman called. He was at our house at 10:40a and we finally got the heat back at 1:30p!

Evidently the first repairman was Jr. repairman. The second repairman was Sr. repairman. Jr. repairman didn't know what was going on. Sr. repairman saw Jr. repairman's work in the heating unit and just shook his head. He never said anything directly, but I got the just of Sr. repairman's frustration. When all was said and done, there were 4 things wrong with the heater: a bad connector,a blown transformer, a burned wire to the compressor, and a burnt out heating coil. Jr. Repairman just thought it was something called a sequencer. Ah, well, it doesn't matter anymore anyway because we have heat. And tonight I'm enjoying my nice and toasty 70 degree house.

During quiet time today Payton decided to put on some 'fancy clothes'. Her idea of 'fancy' was a bathing suit inside out and backwards, a pair of pajama shorts, two mismatched socks, and a frilly red velvet hat. I guess after having the house so cold, it felt downright hot to her. I don't get it, but I'm not three and a half.