Sheep Guarding Llama

Monday morning.  We starting working on getting the tires dealt with around eight thirty.  I called our insurance and got everything confirmed as to what to do.  I was going to just run out and deal with the tire myself but Dominica felt that it would make more sense if we packed up and got out of the house with the kids and all went to deal with it so that we would be out of the way and could get out before Kelly left for work so that she could lock up the house after us.  That was the wrong decision as we were unable to get the kids all ready and out the door before Kelly left for work anyway.  So we ended up losing two hours or more of time this morning because of that and then the kids had to sit and wait at the tire shop instead of sleeping another hour and just hanging out at the house with their devices charging.  More of the disaster weekend.

So instead of getting to AutoTire at 8:30, we got there around 10:30.  The insurance approved the tire replacement instantly but took about two hours to get the payment sent over leaving us with quite a bit of time to kill while waiting for that.

We went to Subway and got ourselves a late breakfast or early lunch.  That was good and took up some time.  Then we went back to AutoTire and just sat there in the waiting room.  They had wifi so the girls were on their iPads.  I did some walking while we were there, just around the plaza.

It was half past noon when we were finally onto the road.  The insurance covered everything, which was a big relief.  And we were underway.

The drive was not so bad today.  But it was a very late start.  I did all of the driving today, and most of it was in the dark.

We did stop for a quick stop for ice cream at a Dairy Queen.  The girls had never been to one before and really liked it.  Luciana declared it her favourite ice cream.  Dad would be proud.

We grabbed some Taco Bell late at night once we were into Ohio.  The girls love Taco Bell now.  I finally converted them to it.  Their favourite is the cheesy roll ups.

It was about midnight when we got into Canton and found Gwen and Mike’s house.  They have lived here for about four years and we have never managed to see their house! They were all set up with an air mattress in the living room for the girls to sleep on.

We visited until probably two in the morning and then got off to bed.

I called the insurance company this morning but they are closed on the weekend and we cannot talk to them until the morning.  That’s a bit of a problem.  I called a tire place up the street and verified that they have the tires that we need and what it will cost.  There is no huge hurry to get to Ohio, now, so we need to save the hundreds of dollars on the tire.  We paid a lot for this insurance, we need to use it.

We started the day going out to lunch with Paul and Karen. Had a really nice lunch at a local bar and grill that is right across the street from them.

This afternoon, at Paul and Karen’s recommendation, we took Karen’s car from lunch and drove the girls to the St. Louis Science Center and had a really nice afternoon at the museum.  The girls had a great time.   They loved the dinosaur exhibit which had one of the “digging for bones” activities that Liesl loves so much.  Luciana’s favourite exhibit was one where you squeezed bottles and smelled a dozen different things and had to guess what they were.

We closed down the museum, which is free.  It’s not huge but it is really nice and well done and very impressive considering that it is totally free.

We went back to the house and relaxed for a while.  Kelly came home from work and Dominica requested that we all go out to eat at a place she saw down the street called Uncle Bill’s Pancake House.  Dinner ended up being quite good.

We got up in the Super 8 in Atoka, Oklahoma this morning.  I was just about to get into the shower when Gwen called me to tell me that grandma had just passed.  The bleeding in her brain was just too much and she could not hold on any longer.  She had never regained consciousness and had been totally unresponsive for some time.  So we are no longer in a hurry to get to Ohio, we can take our time now.

We went down to check about breakfast.  The room said that it was open until ten but last night they had said nine thirty.  It was a quarter till ten and we had just missed it.  So we went back to the room and found ourselves locked out.  Even the hotel staff could not get us back into the room, the lock was broken.

So for two hours we were stuck at the hotel waiting for them to get the door open so that we could get our stuff out of it.  We had a nice view from the breakfast room as they tried to batter down the door.  The front desk guy opened the breakfast back up for us and made us breakfast while we waited.  That was an adventure on its own.

It took two hours to get us into the hotel room, so all of the time that we spent last night driving to get up to Oklahoma was lost from that.  We’d have been better off not leaving until this morning.

We got on the road and put in a long day. We actually had lunch with the Ralstons not far past Joplin, Missouri.  We were crossing paths out on Interstate 44 and were able to stop at a Subway there and get lunch together.  How weird that we crossed there.

We were in central Missouri, late at night, when the back left tire blew on the Nissan Quest.  It took a few minutes to figure out what had happened.  I pulled over at the best place that I could find.  We got out and looked and saw that the tire was totally toast. It was still there and no wheel damage, but the tire was useless.

It was a really busy and narrow part of I44 but thankfully, almost instantly, a wrecker pulled up and blocked traffic for us.  Nick, who was driving the wrecker, changed the tire for us at no charge and got us underway on our spare.  It was about 90 miles to St. Louis where we were going to Karen’s house to spend the night anyway.

I was so tired and so sick by the time that we were getting towards St. Louis that Dominica had to drive.  We limped into town and got to Karen’s house pretty late.  We hung out with Paul and Karen for a few hours before getting off to bed.  Lots of tequila tonight.

It’s Friday.  We spent the day packing like crazy.  So many boxes to go through.  Pretty much all of the boxes have been gone through at this point.  Now it is more about getting the rooms cleaned up.

It snowed this morning and Rachel got home from work very early, like still in the morning.  It is enough snow that it is a bit of a disaster for Dallas.  We heard of people having six hour commutes!

I wrote and posted pretty much all day.  Once the evening rolled around I was on duty for getting the girls’ room picked up.  They did a great job of helping be go through their toys and they determined that basically everything was to be stored and kept at the house, not coming with us to Italy.

While I was on the floor working on picking up the room Dominica came in to tell me that Monica had reached her to tell us that grandma had just been found at home, unconscious in a pool of blood in the living room.  She is being rushed to the ER, but it does not look good.

So we moved from packing “quickly” to packing “really, really quickly.”  We had been planning on leaving to head to Ohio either tomorrow or Sunday, but now we are trying to go tonight.  Packing in a panic is not good, this is us packing for the next six months, we have to get this right.

It was very helpful that Rachel was home today as it helped to get things done.  She is going to move into the girls’ room now since they have the nice bed.

It was about midnight when we got out the door.  We drove as far as we could which was not far, just to Atoka, Oklahoma.  I was very tired and we needed to stop.  We got into the Super 8 and got to bed.

Thursday.  I put in a normal day. Dominica worked like crazy all day going through the boxes in the garage to get ready for the final packing.  The Ralstons are getting to the house on Saturday night and we expect to overlap with them for just a little bit this weekend.  We want everything all cleaned up.  Shawn came over too, since the garage was now clear, and he was able to get the rest of his stuff that has been being stored at the house.  So we suddenly have tons of space that we did not have before.

Our real adventure for the day did not occur until this evening.  It got very cold tonight and we noticed that heat have issues, again.  I ran outside and checked before it froze out and found the heat pump encased in ice.  We tried working with the thermostat again but were unable to get the stupid 3M device to not run the heat pump.

My theory is that the 3M thermostat has not worked for years and no one has been paying attention to how much it has been running or how the house does not heat up properly.  I have not been here for a winter since the winter of 2012 – 2013.

So after trying to get it working for a while I spoke to Art and we all agreed that it seemed like the thermostat was the issue.  We have hated that thermostat since the first day with it.  Absolute garbage, I will never buy 3M products after that.  I checked the website and it looks like they sold the product line and maybe the company that they sold it to is out of business now as well.

I checked online and found that our local Home Depot carried the EcoBee 3 Lite that I want to get to replace our thermostat.  They had three listed as being in the Carrollton store so I immediately ran down there and picked one up.  It was the very last one on the shelf!

I came home and Dominica and I managed to follow the directions and replace the old thermostat with the new Ecobee and instantly the furnace kicked on and started heating the house.  The smell of burning dust from the furnace made it very, very apparent that the furnace has not kicked on in a very long time.  The house heated up like it has not done in a very long time.  We are so thankful that we figured this out.  Sadly we now have an amazing, new top of the line thermostat with really cool features just in time for us to leave the house for a very long time.

So that was some excitement, but it turned out really well and it was an upgrade that we have been meaning to do for a very long time.  So we are not too upset about it.  It was just bad timing.