Trying to keep warm

Well, it's the end of October and we finally decided to breakdown and start the boiler. Wednesday night after Addie went to bed (thank goodness!) Michael turned the gas on to the boiler and light it. No problems... then I went upstairs and cranked the thermostats up to get the boiler to running and the house a little warmer. As soon as I turned the thermostat in our living room own I heard an explosion sound in the basement and all the electricity browned out. As you can imagine it scared the you know what out of me and went running to the basement screaming for Michael to make sure he was not hurt.

Thank God he was alright. One of the water pumps on the boiler had the motor burn up and there was a bit of smoke in the basement. We turned off the gas and electric to the boiler and called it a night. We all just slept with lots of blankets and toughed out the cold house in the morning. I was able to get a heating guy over here yesterday afternoon to replace the motor. I had the same guy come out who the previous family used. He's a great guy who has been doing this for 30+ years. He was saying that our boiler is the oldest one that he as serviced and that he thinks that it will probably be the only one that he will see make it to 50+ yrs in age. The boiler runs great and has no problems so he thought that we still have a few more years left. That's good to hear!

As most of you know I've been making baby legs. My test pair for my neighbor was a hit. I just made her 7 more pairs yesterday so that she will always have a clean pair for her daughter to wear. She loves them that much. There is another thing you can do with baby legs that is kind of fun and that is to use them on your arms for the older kids. Addie has some t-shirts she just can not give up (like her Girl's Fly one) but with no heat in the house it was to cold to where them by themselves. My solution was to have her wear a pair of Margaret's baby legs on her arms. She loved it! Here are a couple photos Michael took of her with them on.

I need to make a few more for us to use but I have also decided that it would great to make some extra pairs for others. I would like to give the extra pairs to the Sisters that run the Readiness Center and Social Services Programs for Benton Harbor through our Church. It might be helpful for a family on a tight budget to be able to extend the use of their kids clothes during our cold months. If anyone has any gently used ladies knee hi socks, that are not being used, please feel free to send them my way. I'll make them into baby legs/ arm warmers.