Our Winter fun...and not so fun...

Last weekend we decided to head out to the resort at Maumee Bay State Park which is just east of Toledo on Lake Erie. My mom picked Ian up from daycare on Friday afternoon so they could head out and get checked in to our rooms. Then when Brian and I got off of work we picked up Alexis and drove out. The weather had started to get bad that afternoon and by the time we drove out there the roads were a mess. We made it though and had a really great weekend. It was nice to be inside a warm place and look out at the beautiful snow without having to go out and shovel it or try to drive in it (that awaited us when we left on Sunday).
We did go outside and play in the snow for a little bit but that didn't last very long. The wind coming off the lake was just too cold. So we spent the rest of our weekend indoors swimming in the pool and hot tubs, playing games in our rooms or sitting by one of the nice fireplaces in the lobby.
Here are a few pictures just outside of our rooms playing:

The weather the rest of the week only got worse. The snow kept coming and the temperatures began to get well below zero. The following Friday saw temperatures at about negative 30 with windchill. The poor furnace in our house just couldn't keep up. Our upstairs was warm thank goodness but downstairs we couldn't get the heat above 60 and that's when the trouble started. We've had the pipes in our downstairs bathroom freeze before but when we got home from work this past Friday we had no water in any part of the house.

Saturday morning we woke up and still no water so we called the water department to see if it was a problem on their end (they had been out in the alley behind us with a backhoe for several hours on Friday). They sent someone out who took a look all over and told us that unfortunately it was our pipes that were frozen. He suggested leaving the door to our crawlspace open to try to get some heat down there where the pipes were.

Since there wasn't much else we could do we packed up some things and headed to my mom's house to take showers and get ready for the day. We were planning to take Ian to the International Auto Show in Detroit so we decided to just go ahead and go up there.....oh boy....

The actual auto show was great. Ian loved all the cool cars and kept saying, "Let's go bye-bye in that one!" Fortunately, you could get in and look at most of them so he was excited to do that. He really liked all the crazy concept cars and was very interested in the Mustangs, the new Camaro and the Viper.

After the show is when our day started to get slightly off track. Surprise, surprise we started to get more snow. The temperatures had come up a bit (I think we were finally above 15 degrees) but the snow mixed with the fact that Detroit has a bit of a problem with construction detours and lack of funding for plowing or salting made for quite a mess. It took us about 3 hours to get home (normally it's 50 minutes) and I can't even count how many spin-outs and accidents we saw. Luckily we made it home safely.

Because we were without water we decided to let the kids sleep at my mom's house and Brian and I would go back home to make sure things were alright there....thank goodness we did. Around 2:00 a.m. I got up to go the bathroom and could hear water running. "Oh, thank goodness!" I thought....until Brian and I went downstairs to see that it was actually a burst pipe pouring water into our crawlspace. Lovely.

A long string of events followed but we eventually got the water turned off, put a call in to a plumber, and got back in bed around 3:30 a.m.

Which bring me to today....we are on our third day without water and are still waiting for a plumber but the crawlspace has mostly dried out and we are lucky to be able to go to my mom's house when we need to. As if my Dad and sisters weren't already trying to get us to move down to Florida with them, now they've got this to keep reminding us of. Ah well.....

Hopefully, next time I post a blog we'll have water......