Drips, clogs, cracks, and just plain broken!

Living in a house that is quite possibly over 100 years old, there is always something that needs repair or replacing. But leading up to the new year, it seemed that everything was breaking at once. One night I (Mike) was informed that the drain in the boy's bathtub was clogged. Upon inspection I also found out the faucet was dripping! That's not a good combination to have unless somebody wanted to stay up all night scooping buckets of water out of the bathtub. I was able to repair the leaking faucet that same night because luckily I found some replacement parts in the random-household-repair-parts-dresser. The drain would continue to be a problem for the next several days. After trying combinations of chemicals, a snake, plunger, baking soda/vinegar, and finally more chemicals, I was minutes from calling a plumber. Then it was a I decided to take one more try at the snake from a different angle and was finally successful.

In the meantime, I've been trying to re-grout our kitchen floor and replace some broken ceramic tiles. We had some old grout mixture in the garage, but that's not working so I finally bought some new stuff. So a new year was hopefully to bring less stress. Then two nights ago the unit oven stopped working. At least we have an oven in our apartment so we're now cooking in that until the replacement part arrives. In addition to that, our washer is dying a slow death and our unit van will need some better tires (if we ever get more snow). To make this all a little bit more stressful, one of our placements that we were expecting a very significant stipend from this year will most likely not be able to come through for us. They had major lay-offs and budget reductions and our stipend was eliminated.

But in the midst of what can seem like everything breaking at once, and a budget that needs adjustment, we are grateful for what we have--prayers and support from people near and far. We look forward to the rest of a great year knowing that things in our house may break but our spirits will not!