The kids have been home from school a lot lately with MLK Jr Day, Presidents’ Day, snow days, etc. Today, the three older ones were home for a teacher in-service. On so many of their other days off, I have just kept on with work projects I had to finish. Today, I acted like it was Saturday. Evangeline had a friend over to play, I cleaned a little, did a little laundry, did a little web surfing, fed kids, and forgot about most of the work things I had to do.

We ended the afternoon with the three older ones playing Candy Land with Charis, and with three of the four helping with making homemade pizza and Evangeline helping me to make homemade bread to take to shepherding group on Sunday. Here are a couple photos to help us remember the day:

The pizzamakers

The pizza mmmmmmmmm . . . . . .

I dub November 2007 “Appliance Month.”  Now, I wish it were because I got all new appliances in my house, but it was not. 

First, a few weeks back, we had this stove installed in our kitchen.

I bought this stove from an older lady almost a year ago to replace the over 30-year-old brown version we had in our kitchen.  It took us a long time to get it installed because it is built into the cabinetry, and we just weren’t handy enough to do it ourselves.  While it is not new, it is a nice bright white, not ugly brown.  It is very clean, and it came with a white range hood.  It also has a working electrical outlet on the left side that allows me to use small electric appliances on both sides of my kitchen.  Finally, all the burners work.  Ugly old brown stove could boast none of these qualities!

The other appliance event of the last month involves the refrigerator.  We went to visit my mother in PA over the Thanksgiving holiday, and before we left, our refrigerator was making a whirring noise.  I was concerned that we would come home to a non-working refrigerator but not concerned enough to fit in having a repairman to come look at it before we leaving town.  My concerns were proven true.  We arrived home the Sunday after Thanksgiving to find our refrigerator dripping and warm.  Fortunately, the food was still salvageable, and we put all the non-frozen things in coolers and all the frozen things in our big freezer in the garage. 

(Some may remember that the same refrigerator went on the fritz last year just a few days before Christmas.  Hmmmm. . . Can appliances be allergic to holidays?)

We called for a repairman right away, but he wasn’t able to come until Tuesday.  He diagnosed the problem as a non-working fan, but, of course, he didn’t have one in stock.  He put one on order, and we continued to live out of coolers until yesterday afternoon, when our trusty repairman returned to install the new fan.

It wasn’t fun living out of coolers this week, but we managed.  On the upside, I took the opportunity to clean the inside of my refrigerator very thoroughly, and now it looks nearly new inside.  I even scrubbed the dingy gray door handles with some baking soda to get them looking white again.