{"id":2833,"date":"2013-12-20T11:12:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T16:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/?p=2833"},"modified":"2013-12-20T22:16:56","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T03:16:56","slug":"oh-baby-its-cold-outside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2013\/12\/oh-baby-its-cold-outside.html","title":{"rendered":"Oh Baby It’s Cold Outside: Christmas Preparations and a Flooded Basement"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"I'll<\/a>

I’ll bet you want to put on a coat just looking at this, don’t you?<\/p><\/div>\n

The picture above is what we awakened to this morning, with 19F temperature. This came on the heels of several pleasant days: the kids could walk to\/from school and I enjoyed an outside run.<\/p>\n

A far departure from the Florida temperate conditions we had every Christmas.<\/p>\n

You won’t be seeing as many “Colorado Discoveries” posts this time of year, mainly because it’s been colder here. We aren’t spending as much time outside.<\/p>\n

In fact, we had a few very very cold days at the beginning of December…so cold, with ice on the roads, that the boys’ school was closed for a couple days. We learned that our fancy expensive Davis Instruments weather station doesn’t handle temperatures below 0F very well<\/a>, but our less expensive AcuRite did fine<\/a>. It got down to a low of -11F at the house on December 6th.<\/p>\n

The kids attempted a grand total of about 15 minutes of play outside during their snow days. Ordinarily they love playing in the snow, too!<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>

I had suggested they sled down the front yard, which is slightly sloped. But it was too cold, so they had a snowball fight instead.<\/p><\/div>\n

As we’re hunkered down in the house with plenty of hot cocoa and blankets, we’ve been able to really keep up with our holiday preparations. The cards went out on time, and all of the gifts were ordered, purchased, received, wrapped, and re-mailed to our friends and relatives on time.<\/p>\n

I’m so proud of myself!<\/p>\n

Our family has enjoyed a couple of Christmas parties, including our own holiday open house. We’re enjoying spending time with our new friends, and we’re grateful for the 12 bottles of wine that came over. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

We hope your families are enjoying a nice holiday season too.<\/p>\n

In other news, our basement suffered some flooding a mere 2 weeks after we passed the final inspection and we had moved downstairs! It was the Sunday after the bitter cold, and a slight thaw revealed a burst pipe.<\/p>\n

We were able to quickly turn off the water, get a couple of Shop Vacs going within about 10 minutes, and we had a plumber and ServPro over within a couple hours to start the cleanup process.<\/p>\n

\"That<\/a>

That tiny hole, less than the diameter of a dime, cast some 700 gallons of water into our basement over 2-3 hours’ time.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"We<\/a>

We had to re-accomplish the hallway flooring. We did some fancy Tetris-ing to do it without pulling up the glued-in baseboards.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The bulk of the damage to the drywall was contained these two holes that the plumber cut to get to the broken pipe.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you come home to a flooding basement, make sure to (1) turn off the water and (2) get out your Shop Vac.<\/p>\n

If you don’t have a Shop Vac: GET ONE!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The picture above is what we awakened to this morning, with 19F temperature. This came on the heels of several pleasant days: the kids could walk to\/from school and I enjoyed an outside run. A far departure from the Florida temperate conditions we had every Christmas. You won’t be seeing as many “Colorado Discoveries” posts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[451,617,467,54,153,618],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ycQ0-JH","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":285,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/12\/21-degrees-in-2-hours.html","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":0},"title":"21 Degrees in 2 Hours…","date":"27 December 08","format":false,"excerpt":"...More Nebraska weather fun. A cold front came through and plummeted our temperature from 53F at 9pm to 32F at 11pm.It got up to 60F today! No jackets! We can see our lawn again! Perhaps today should have been the day to take down the Christmas lights, while we could\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cold weather\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/01\/a-chillier-forecast-ahead.html","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":1},"title":"A Chillier Forecast Ahead…","date":"10 January 08","format":false,"excerpt":"...which means \"goodbye\" to the grill for a few days. Don't like to grill when it's cold, but tonight's hot dog (for Timmy) and hamburger (for the rest of us) dinner was quick and easy.My latest addiction: the Pioneer Woman blog, added a bew-tee-full pot roast how-to guide this week.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cold weather\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":53,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/01\/on-this-cold-day-lets-think-about-something-warm.html","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":2},"title":"On this cold day, let’s think about something warm!","date":"22 January 08","format":false,"excerpt":"In this cold weather, I was thinking fondly about the butterfly garden I had planted in my backyard in Florida. I planted most of the stuff in July 2003, after my summer veggie crop croaked from either baking to death in the hot FL sun or rotting to death from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"butterflies\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2730,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2013\/11\/a-chill-in-the-air.html","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":3},"title":"A Chill in the Air","date":"06 November 13","format":false,"excerpt":"Winter is most certainly on its way! Here in eastern Colorado we're now experiencing days where the high temperature doesn't exceed 35F, and the lows are dipping into the teens. Colorado Springs is well known for its very mercurial weather, it could be 70F one day, 20F the next. Dave\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"chill\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/IMG_8501.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":265,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/11\/if-its-going-to-be-this-cold.html","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":4},"title":"If It’s Going to be THIS Cold…","date":"08 November 08","format":false,"excerpt":"It's friggin' cold here. Highs in the 30s, lows in the 20s...winds 15-20 knots, gusting into the 30s.It's been like this since Thursday. It's going to be like this for a while.Okay okay okay...I'm a wuss.I grew up on the coast. When you live near water, cold temperature spells are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cold weather\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":459,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2010\/08\/the-vollmer-weather-curse-take-6.html","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":5},"title":"The Vollmer "Weather Curse", Take 6","date":"28 August 10","format":false,"excerpt":"Most of this text is stolen from a 21 November 2008 blog post about the crazy weather experiences we've had everywhere we've lived since we've been married. At the end of that blog post, I posed the question: \"What will Bellevue, Nebraska bring?\" Now that we're wrapping up our Nebraska\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cold weather\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/6\/63\/Ice_Storm_98_trees_line_Noaa6198.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2833"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2833"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2842,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2833\/revisions\/2842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}