Roughing it!

Things are going well here. Lots going on...

Saturday our water heater started leaking. Just so you know, that's a bad thing. We attempted drainage pans for a while, but quickly gave up on that thought. So now we are just plain without hot water until our new solar water heating system can be delivered... in April. Sure, we could've had a replacement put in on Monday but when you've gotta redo everything you might as well do it right, right? This system is so cool. It is everything we were hoping for and more. If anyone wants more info I'd be happy to ramble on about it... but not right now, lol. So the good news is that even though it is pretty pricey, we are getting a hefty tax refund that will completely cover it and still leave us with a couple K in our pocket. The exciting news is that we will be one of the first in the US to get this system! They've been using it in Europe for decades but it's just making its way over here now... which leads to the bad news. They can't even ship it until April 1st so were looking at an install maybe the 3rd or 4th. But we've been surviving by boiling water on the stove for dishes and laundry and have been making good use out of our solar camp shower. The kids actually really love the "sun shower" as they call it. So we should be just fine roughing it for a couple weeks.

So what else? Monday I went for my integrated screening which included a really, really long ultrasound. The little bugger wouldn't get into the right position for the test so we just had to wait and prod and wait. Ah, but I am so in love! Blobby was just wiggling around, kicking, twirling, and sucking his/her thumb. Did you know that they are already sucking their thumbs at 13 weeks? I got a fabulous picture but, of course, I haven't scanned it in yet. Everything looks great - two arms, two legs, etc. It was such a cool ultrasound though. It was a really high quality machine and I got lots of nice long looks at Blobby's skull, brain, ribs, spine, and those cute little hands. It's just amazing. Life is a true miracle.

Today, Tuesday, we had a 4-H meeting. It was the "boring meeting" so there's not much to report on from there. Oh Cameron did volunteer to head up a community service project in which we hand out money to all the poor people who need it on the side of the road. I tried to explain to him that there were just too many people out there to do that but he said that we could just give money to one person then and then when the club gets some more money we can give it to another and so on. So sweet. So idealistic. Anyway, he was given this project so I think it is now up to me to help him figure out a more practical way to help the poor and homeless. We have a great homeless shelter here so I guess we really need to call them to see what we can do to help.

Also at the meeting we judged posters for our yearly 4-H fundraiser known as Chickenque. Here's Cam's...

The younger kids' work wasn't actually judged, they all got ribbons, but I did hear several people comment on how cute his was. Maybe I'm just biased, but I agree.

And that's about it lately except for the usual gymnastics and baseball. We haven't actually gotten around to any bookwork this week but Cameron did spend about 45 minutes this morning playing Timez Attack. So that's math and we certainly learned a lot about solar energy on Monday, so there's science. Oh and Cameron read the little tag on the back of his 4-H ribbon and insisted on filling it out with his name, entry, and ranking so let's call that Language Arts. We can throw a couple bedtime stories into that group too. OK, school is accounted for. Now I need to go boil some water for dishes. Oh joy.