Good news

We had a pipe leak under the concrete slab on the older part of the house. We've been dealing with it since before Thanksgiving. Basically, we would only turn on the water to the house when we needed it. This process was annoying, but not too terrible. (It was chilly going outside after a shower to turn it back off!!!) Well, I forgot to turn the water off on Saturday when we went to our adoption class. That evening, when we returned, we did some laundry and ran the dishwasher. It had been on all day by this point. The flower beds by our front door started to flood that night. This was also the time we were working to get the rest of the wedding decorations finished, so it was probably the low point for us emotionally. I was tired and cranky, and I felt like our house was going to float away or something.

We had gotten two bids for two different approaches to the repair. Both were in the $5000-$7000 range. We were able to get a ballpark number down to around $4000 if all the cleanup work was done by me. (Drywall repair, replacing the wall mirror, etc.) It might as well have been $4 million because we just don't have anything extra right now.

Here's where the good news part comes in. We met someone at Joy's wedding who had dealt with the same problem a few weeks ago. She highly recommended her plumber Tony. So we called him and he came out yesterday morning. By the time I got home, the repair had been completed! He used a stethoscope and found the exact point of the leak and was able to diagnose that the only leak was to the guest bathroom. He ran new pipes in the attic for that bathroom only. His opinion is that this is all that is necessary. The bill was $700 - still a lot, but we can probably manage that. So this was very encouraging for us.

Another item of good news is that Jenetta and I have been chosen to be one of the three families featured in a story in Redbook magazine. The article is about how different people are handling the economic downturn. There will be photos of us and our interview in the magazine. The people at the magazine thought that Jenetta would connect with their readers. We will have more info on this as it comes together, but this is a pretty neat opportunity for us.

And one more "good news" thing. Well, not really good news, but enjoying simple things...
I put the lights on the front of our house last night. They make me happy.