Great weekend (1:1 TIME W/ WIFE)

What an incredible weekend. My wonderful mother volunteered to spend time with the kids and I made plans to drop them off at Mom’s then go to the farm and sight in my muzzle loader and six shooter for the upcoming deer season. As an extra treat, I took one of my rifles along to play with.
Jill elected to stay home and rest as BF had been pretty tiring for her. She planned on doing some cleaning, organizing and take a nap in the morning. She also planned to take another in the afternoon and just have some personal alone time. Can you imagine? She might even get to shower without anyone crying “mommy” or maybe even go to the bathroom in peace.
So I rounded up the kids and their suitcases (for an overnight stay, suitcases?) and all my supplies in the car and went about my day.
In between IaCity and the MIL, I stopped by Dietrich509 and visited with his family to see how the holidays had treated them. As usual, I enjoyed my time with them as I hadn’t seen them in months.
At the farm shooting went well. I could go on and on about that, but most people would be quickly bored.
The ONLY part of the day that could be taken as a downer was working on the water heater for MIL. She doesn’t have a softener or in-line filter and so her water heater tends to build up lime. A LOT of lime. She asked if I could replace the heating element and I said I would. I even went on YouToob and watched a plumber demonstrate how easy it was. You know, I would like to find that plumber and drop a water heater on his toe. In his video the element comes out so easy you would think that there is nothing to it. Well in his heater there was nothing to it because it was a new unit. MIL heater was installed 10 years ago and the heating element had corroded into a solid weld. It finally yielded to a two foot cheater bar and MIL holding the heater so it wouldn’t tip over. Between the two of us, we got the element out. That was when I discovered that her water supply comes from an alternate universe. You see, I had drained the heater while I was shooting. So for two hours that heater drained. And all the while, I had shut off the water at the well, so there was no water coming into the house. By the time we got the element out the hose had stopped draining about an hour previously. Mysteriously, when we took out the element we had very cold, fifty degree (F) water running all over the floor. The water ran out for nearly a half hour before I screwed the old element back into the heater (since I couldn’t even get it out) and said screw it, I had had enough. Quite a bit of lime came out so hopefully the heater will work better for a while. We never did figure out the source of the water.
Sunday morning Jill and I woke to the sunshine, not children crying. We had a quiet breakfast of homemade apple pie (courtesy of the Dietrich’s) and visited. Just talked. The two of us talked to each other. No screaming. No crying. No pressure. We connected and shared ideas and did some planning.
IT. WAS. AWESOME. And SO NEEDED!
Then we got out of bed and wrapped Xmas presents for nearly two hours then went and picked up our darling kids whom we had missed SO MUCH. BTW, there is NOTHING that can replace watching your child’s face light up when they see you at the door and scream “MOMMY, DADDY, MOMMY, DADDY, MOMMY, DADDY” until you catch them and gather them into a hug. Priceless.
Later, I will be posting the Christmas itinerary that Jill has planned for our family. All I can say is I will need a PDA to coordinate EVERYTHING that has to happen for our new family tradition. Burrier and Ives won’t have nothing on US! (if it works according to plan)