Murphy's Week

This has been quite a crazy week.  In the peak (valley?) of the cold weather, our heat pump froze over.  Fortunately, we have two propane fireplaces.  After using them for a couple days, the one in the family room filled with soot.... not a good sign.  We cleaned it and it filled again immediately.  We were then down to just the fireplace in our master bedroom to heat the house.  At about the same time, our van began smoking while driving it.  After a little investigation, we found that it was squirting oil when it was on.  This apparently means either a very quick fix (unlikely) or a crack in the engine block (a totaled 1995 minivan).  I was also summoned for jury duty in both Pierce and Kitsap county.  This might be fun, if I didn't have a 3 month old and a "big girl."

The happy ending:

As of yesterday, we know what to do to fix the heat pump and have been able to get our electric furnace working.  We also have a couple of tests to run on the fireplace.  The van turned out to need a new o-ring ($2.50) and I was excused from at least one county's jury duty and am hopeful of the other.  

In other good news, we finally installed the sink in our half bath (thanks, Dad and Nick!) and ... drumroll please ... Bethelle is officially potty trained.  It seems that Murphy can work in reverse as well.

Bethelle at the keyboard (notice she actually got "tree" in there):

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