Who Said Things Happen in 3's?

It was after midnight before Aaron finally crawled into bed and said, "You're not going to want to hear this. I just cut a hole in the ceiling of the garage....the sheetrock and insulation were soaking wet." What?!?! So much for a good nights' sleep. He had my attention. Apparently, he had gone out to the garage and quickly noticed the soggy ceiling. Doing a little detective work, led to this. And oh what a mess he made! The good news is that he FOUND the leak. But the story continues...

Little did I know what was just ahead. The morning of New Years Eve day I went to take a shower. Um, no water. Not good. More detective work. Freezing temperatures led to freezing water pipes in the master bedroom. Without going into the details of it all, let's just say Aaron/plumber/Dad (happened to be in town) spent a good portion of the day on this next project. Oh, and because it was so COLD, the vacuum pipe broke when the plumber/Aaron accidently stepped on it. The good news is that for now, the DUCT TAPE is working. But the story continues...

Guess what I discovered Monday morning after throwing in a load of laundry? Another frozen pipe. Insulating this area was tricky because we do not have a crawl space or a basement. We paid extra for major insulation when we built this house so I was not thrilled with another mini-drama. The good news is the insulation company was able to navigate the gauntlet and hopefully, problem resolved. But the story continues...

Driving a carpool of kids Monday afternoon, I discovered this when we were just a mile or two away from home. We should have all just walked but some of the kids (not mine) had on short-sleeve t-shirts without coats - and it was about 4 degrees outside. Needless to say, I actually drove home on the rim. It's still sitting in the garage because we haven't had a spare minute to put on the spare tire (no pun intended). The crazy thing is that it went flat immediately on the snow/ice covered road so the good news is that I was able to pull over safely. I wish the story ended here. But no.

This morning as I was getting ready to go visiting teaching, I found Quinn in my bathroom. He prefers to play IN the toilet when given the chance, so I was surprised to see him sitting on the floor NEAR the toilet looking at books. Off we went for the next few hours to spread good cheer to others. After we returned home, I fed the kids lunch and answered a phone call from a neighbor who had a plumbing question. How ironic that only moments later, I discovered WATER spraying from behind my bathroom toilet! And we are not talking a little bit of water (3 hours later). Big problem.

I soaked up every single towel in the house before this truck arrived to start suctioning water out of the master closet/bedroom.

This pic is for Dad. He'll appreciate the genius behind it. Not a lot of water seeped through to the storage room but enough that we didn't want any potential mold issues. Short of taking all the built-in shelving apart (nightmare), Aaron drilled holes for the large fans to work their magic. Keeping our fingers crossed:)

Several of these babies will be running 24-7 until the restoration company returns on Saturday. Yes, it sounds like airport tarmac around here!

Hey, the fun doesn't stop around here! This is what the older kids found when I sent them to get little buddy up from his nap yesterday afternoon. Quinn managed to get his diaper off and the rest is obvious! This picture doesn't capture the magnitude of it but I can assure you it took me hours to clean up. I had to chuckle when I heard my girls say to each other, "Yeah, that's why I don't want to be a Mom!" At that moment, I couldn't have agreed more...

And for those counting, that's more than 3.