bipolar weather

I didn't mention in my post last week that we discovered a leak in our garage last Saturday. We figured it was coming from the master bath, which is above the garage, but we didn't know what to do about it. My parents were in Nevada until Tuesday, but my dad was nice enough to come over Wednesday to look at it. Turns out, the ring that holds the toilet down rusted out. Apparently there are kits you can use to fix this pretty easily, but since we had to pull up the toilet anyway, Steve and I considered doing some updates to the bathroom. We've wanted to since we moved into this house, but haven't had the money. But we just got our tax return, and the new car didn't cost as much as we expected, so we had about $1800 we could use to put in some new tile and get a new vanity. We were all set to go pick out tile and a vanity Friday, then pull out the old vanity and paint on Saturday. And then the check engine light came on in our family car. A problem with the intake manifold circuit, according to Napa Auto Parts. We couldn't get into a mechanic Friday afternoon, so we have to wait until Monday to see what the fix will cost. :( If it costs more than about $800, we're probably going to have to replace that car, too. *sigh* At least this happened before we spent the extra money, I suppose.

My hair has been struggling lately. It's too short to curl, but too long to have any shape. I'm not sure if I want to cut it shorter again or grow it out again. So I curled my whole head with a curling iron the other day in a desperate attempt to make it look presentable. I think it worked. :)

Mira and Cecily made playdoh robots again one day this week.

Cecily played with her magnetic building blocks a lot this week, too.

She is such a destructo child. This was taken about 11 am. It was completely clean when she woke up and she was the only kid at home.

Steve and I went to the temple yesterday. It was a beautiful day. And I didn't even sleep through the whole session. Miracles never cease. Since we couldn't rip out our bathroom, we did some cleaning, and napping, and writing. The kids played outside with friends pretty much all afternoon. It was almost 50 degrees, so Steve barbecued for dinner.

As we slept last night, mother nature decided to play a trick on us. It didn't just snow, it dumped over a foot of the stuff in 8 hours. It's good. We needed the moisture so we don't have a drought this summer. But poor Steve was out there shoveling this morning for almost an hour so we could get out of the driveway for church.

Cecily had a fever yesterday and today, so I'm at home with her, getting my blogging done early for once. :) I was able to get a lot of writing work done this week (plotting a new book, revising two old ones), so I felt successful that way. Exercising has been hard lately. Steve's been really struggling at work. He hates working for Oracle, so he's been cranky and withdrawn for a couple months now. It makes it so I have to pick up the slack, so I'm not getting as much sleep. Which means waking up early to exercise isn't happening. And I have so much going on during the day that I rarely have time in between meals to fit in a workout. I've been trying to eat healthy, but I'm a comfort eater, so that's been worse lately, too. Good thing my scale broke right before Christmas! I know it won't last forever. Steve's been applying to lots of jobs and we're considering other pathways to different work, too. I'm trying to cut myself some slack. We're always our own worst critics, right?