Good Monday

Well, our broken water pipe proved to be a bigger deal than we initially thought. My husband worked on it until dark on Sunday and then took Monday off to finish the job. The materials we thought we needed actually weren't going to be compatible with the particular piping used so he spent three hours being send all over town to different plumbing supply stores until he finally found a place that had all the necessary parts and a very helpful guy who walked him through the process step by step. It took another 3 hours once he got home to finish, but it appears to be fixed, we have water, and we are hopeful this will last. Part of the problem is a huge mesquite tree whose roots entangled and punctured the pipes causing the break. We would like to rip it out but our Gestapo home owner's association mandates that every front yard must contain one 5 gallon tree (ridiculous considering how close together our homes are). So, now we have to have a plumber come out to look at the tree, the roots and their proximity to the pipes and hopefully put in writing the fact that if we leave the tree the roots will cause further damage. It is then our hope that we could successfully contest the mandate. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to go against common sense that an HOA could mandate the necessity of certain foliage when the presence of that landscaping would cause damage to the actual dwelling.

In other news, we were supposed to find out the sex of our baby tomorrow. My husband was going to take the day off and come with. Long story short, since he took off yesterday to deal with the water pipes I called the office to see if there was any way we could come in and have the ultrasound done then instead. They actually said yes, which I totally wasn't expecting so we hustled out.

The baby looks perfectly healthy and was very active during the ultrasound, although proved to be very modest, refusing to uncross the legs. I was starting to get a little anxious because I wanted to know the sex, not really for myself, but the kids were dying to know. Finally at the end we got enough of a glimpse to determine.................................IT'S A GIRL!

Our two year old son was thrilled. He has said since the moment we told the kids I was pregnant that he wanted a sister. However, today when we were at the store, my daughter was pointing out all these cute little girl clothes and I don't know if he started to feel left out because all of a sudden he started crying and said, "I don't want a sister anymore. I want a brother." Broke my heart.

Do It Yourself If You Can

Today really couldn't have gone more wrong. If it wasn't so utterly frustrating it would have been comical. We woke up, intent on going to church, and then heading to my mom's to celebrate Easter. As I was out in the front yard hiding Easter eggs for the kids I discovered that our entire front yard was flooded. We initially thought it was coming from our irrigation system, but later discovered the main water pipe to our house had burst....and it's located UNDER our concrete driveway.

I started calling plumbers to get estimates, etc. The cheapest we were going to get off was $537 and that was assuming they didn't have to tear up the driveway, which truthfully would have been the easier way, and therefore the way they probably would have chosen, regardless of cost to us. So my husband spent the morning digging a ditch to try to locate the pipe. Later in the afternoon my brothers came over to lend a hand in pulling up foliage, sawing out roots, and digging about 3 feet down and 3 feet in (and under) our driveway.

It took 6 hours but my husband and one of my brothers were about to put the new piping in when they realized the pipe they got was 1/16th of an inch too big....and by this time all the hardware stores had closed. So, my husband has to go back and get the correct size tomorrow and hopefully since all the heavy labor has been done it won't take too long to size, cut, and assemble the new piping. Total cost of piping and supplies? Sixteen dollars. Even having to go back and get new piping after the mis-measure will result in a grand total of $32.

That's a lot better than $537!