Saturday, January 9

Slept til 8 a.m. this morning, then got on the treadmill and did weights exercises after breakfast. By the time I was ready for the day, Mother and Sis were here. We began the day by gathering materials needed for making screen door greeting cards. Sis wanted to make two birthday cards for her daughters.

I noticed when I came downstairs that Hubbie had set up a space heater in the living room (where we craft). He said the central heat wasn't performing right...the heat was coming on, but kept going off before it reached the set temperature. So Hubbie called the repairman. He came quickly, and found that condensation had frozen in the drain pipe from the heater, causing the heater to automatically shut off. The repairman unclogged the drain pipe, then wrapped it so it won't freeze again. He said ours was the fourth frozen drain pipe problem that he had to deal with today.

After that, Hubbie checked the propane tank and found it had only 20% propane in it. Because it is so cold, he was afraid we would run out before the end of the weekend, so he called the propane company, and they came and filled the tank. They routinely come by and fill the tank, but because of the extreme cold weather, we used more propane than usual this month.

This unusually cold weather causes all sorts of problems, but thankfully, these two were readily solved.

After lunch, Sis did two really cute cards (I'll snap pictures of them for tomorrow's blog). She only needs to put the finishing touches on them in the morning. While she was doing that, Mother put together a Dutch oven of autumn stew for supper. I moved back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, helping Sis and Mother with their projects, and Hubbie watched a basketball game.

The autumn stew was delicious and warming at supper, served with canned biscuits and choice of strawberry preserves, cherry preserves, peach preserves, pumpkin butter, or honey.

After supper, we played several games of Skipbo, with Mother and I winning two games each, and Hubbie winning one. Then Mother and Sis went to Mother's house, and Hubbie and I watched a couple of one-hour shows on TV.

It was a pleasant day.