More fun with the House (note the sarcasm)

Well, most of you know that last Friday was the anniversary of the storm (as noted in an earlier post) that I refer to as B@!*h. I help out with my MOPS group and that day was our Christmas Tea and my kids were sick with the head cold that's going around. George was very sweet and took a personal day to stay home with them so I didn't have to take them with me and contaminate all of the other kids! Thank God he was here! At 7 AM he heard a pipe burst in the laundry room. No joke. We called the plumber - we are very good customers of Southwest Plumbing, as this was their 4th visit to our house in 3 years. 3 grand later and we have a hole in our wall, a new circulator, a new water shut off, and some new pipes. They also tried to sell us a new furnace, saying ours was too small for the size of our house. We decided to gamble on that one. they told us what all the other repair people did - our house was built to look good and only last about 5 years. Thanks to the builder, we've had to replace 3 toilets, parts of the furnace, grouting, and plenty of pipes. Now we're just waiting to see what goes next!

I had a check-up with my Dr. to check my thyroid stimulating hormone level to see if that's why I've lost over half of my hair. That's right, OVER half of my hair! Literally - no exaggeration. I asked G recently if he would still love if I go bald. Well, I call to make the appointment to find that my beloved doc, Eric, passed away 2 months ago. It was very unexpected and I am pretty broken up about it. I've been in the office twice since I found out and I ended up in tears. He was soooooo great - he always viewed my symptoms as a puzzle that he simply had to figure out. Needless to say, my family will miss him very much. It turns out that it is due to post-partum hormones that I'm losing so much of my hair. I already knew that, but because I was losing so much for such a long time, I had to find out for sure!

I have to tell you what Kea has been saying lately - we'll be in the car and she says, "there's a Christmas tree, there's a Christmas tree, there's a hay tree...." It took me a few days to realize that a Christmas tree is an evergreen and a hay tree is everything else that's leafless right now. Sure - it looks like hay!

Last night I put Tiernan down and a few minutes later he suddenly started crying so much and was terribly upset. I went to check on him and found this:



The first time I saw a pacifier behind the ear was my niece, Mara, now 11. I never guessed that I would see it again!



See - he's not very pleased with the situation.

While we were taking our Christmas Card photos, Kealan kept playing with Tiernan's ear, which he thought was hilarious!