brrrr.

our heater went out yesterday. huge bummer, but this time around the fix isn't too crazy - we just need to replace the ignitor. apparently our furnace is 16-17 years old, though, and 15 years is considered unbelievably great, so...it's likely it will give out in the near future (hopefully that means we can get 2-3 more years out of it...). so that will be $7-12K. which is an astronomical amount of money. yikes. maybe we will win the lottery before then!

anyway. stuff like this makes me super appreciative of a lot of things. where we live - seriously, if we lived in another state, we would have much crazier winters and this would be a huge ordeal. it only got down to 39 here last night, and it stayed a balmy low-mid 60s in the house. we bundled the kidlets up in flannel footie pajamas and let them sleep in ek's bed with the space heater. and jb and i just rocked lots of blankets. but all in all, no worse for the wear. definitely wouldn't be the case if we were dealing with temps in the teens and below.

i'm also just grateful to even have a house and warmth and all those modern necessities that we take for granted. it's crazy. there are so many people who don't have a place to live at all, and this time of year has got to be just awful - even in (mostly) sunny texas.

here are the kids last night and this morning. in spite of the chilliness, they are very resistant to wearing winter-appropriate clothing. also, gumbo makes everything better.