::freezing::

Luckily for us it's not freezing anymore right now--well, at least not the way it was.
The week of my birthday had some crazy weather. My birthday was nice and temperate, but the next day a storm blew in. My parents were flying out that afternoon, and it was truly questionable whether they were going to make it out or not. Lucky for me since Kris was flying out to see his parents that weekend they drove our car down there and parked it in long term parking. It was very nice that I didn't have to drive down and back with the boys, since it was terrible driving conditions and seemed very unsafe.
Max had a two hour delay for school and it was so darn cold I decided to just keep him home so I didn't have to take the baby out in the freezing.

Anyway, they made it luckily--though I think there was some white-knuckle driving in there.
That night it got freezing freezing cold, like well below zero, which is unusual for out here. School was cancelled the next day and we discovered that our pilot light had gone out. We have radiant floor heating and it takes a long time to cool down and a long time to warm up. By the time we realized the furnace wasn't running it was way cold in the house and it took forever and a day to warm up.
We spent a lot of time in the living room by the fire and we dressed Sand really warmly.


Max got out every toy he owned in an effort to entertain himself. He did well, but we were getting pretty tired of the still cold house by the end of the day. We braved the snow that night to go and grab a couple of burgers at a new place with FRY SAUCE!

The next day there was another two hour school delay. I ran into work after I dropped Max off and I got a automated phone call from the school district saying that all the students were warm and safe, but there was a statewide gas shortage and that they were going to close up school as soon as all classes were over. Turned out there was a true shortage and several cities in the state were completely without gas and some without power for days that week! Luckily we were fine. We did close the office friday though, in order to contribute to saving gas for cold homes. School was cancelled too.

It was just a crazy winter week. Kind of fun to have such crazy stuff going on, and lucky that we were warm, but I did feel bad for all the cold people without working heaters. Things like that make us grateful for what we have, and inspire us to make sure we have enough wood to stay warm if we happen to be left with only our fireplace for heat!

Can't wait for spring!

::this week::

This week was our first official week of work in the office and boy has it been crazy!
Our practice loan actually funded without any problems on monday, that was amazing and probably the least stressful thing that happened all week.
Kris's mom was here monday and tuesday and helped us so so much. She hung out with Max so he wouldn't have to spend all day with us at the office (for at least a couple of days) and she helped me with the housework. Without her here I probably wouldn't have survived the week.

We've got a lot of good patients coming into the office and everybody seems really excited to meet Kris. The staff has been great to work with so far and they're being patient with our learning curve. It's definitely really odd to suddenly be in charge of employees. At least they all pretty much know what they're expected to do and we just have to step in and tweak a few things.

Our biggest problem this week has been that one of the insurances that the office takes is SO slow and they haven't approved Kris as a provider yet. The other main insurance company took about two days to get it done. So far we're looking at two weeks plus with these guys and they can't even tell us if they've received the paperwork we faxed them at the beginning of the week. It's super frustrating because Kris can't see those patients, and there are definitely a good amount of them. We're just going to keep on bugging them. Kris and I have each been calling them at least once a day, and we're hoping they'll get so tired of us that they will just approve him so we will leave them alone.

I didn't have any time to take any fun pictures this week, nor did we have any exciting adventures besides Max's little bout with some sort of a stomach bug this morning. We did work a lot, I had a dr's appt out here, which is great because I was worried I was never going to find a doctor.

All in all it's been a good week, though I hope next week is a lot less stressful. It'll probably help that next week I won't have to speak in church or sub for the sunbeams...(like I have to do this week.)

Here's a picture of Kris and I on our first official work day. You can see Max in the corner there enjoying his breakfast, loving that he gets to hang out with Grandma all day.
Thanks for coming out Kathy and saving at least a part of my sanity!!!

(I look a little scared in this picture, maybe I was. Kris looks cute though.)