It comes in "Three's"

Yes, we are here. I got harassed from my bestest friends for "holding out on them" when they got my Christmas letter and found out things that way! Wow! I have really been out of touch!

As for my title...

I had always heard that bad things come in "three's", but we have been having such a tough two years that I hadn't really noticed the sets of "three's" because they must have just been running all together! Now that things are finally slowing down (yeah right!) I did see one set!

Monday, December 22, 2008- Our furnace had been doing some strange things over the weekend and Geno tried to mess with it. What eventually started to happen was that the upstairs heater fan would not turn off and would not heat, either. We eventually had COLD air blowing through all of the vents upstairs. It would be $125/hour for the guy to come out on Sunday to look at it, so we just closed the vents and made good use of all of those blankets I have collected so we could wait until Monday and pay only $75/hour. Well, Jim from Jim's Old-Fashioned Service came out and disconnected the heater completely. The great news-we needed to replace the 5 burners and it MIGHT fix it. That was $200+ dollars that Geno spent ordering the parts. He decided to order them himself to get a better deal. Well, he paid for 5 of them and we were so excited when the box came yesterday UNTIL he opened it and there was only ONE!! He called the place immediately and they are overnighting the other four, but Geno won't be here this week, so we have to wait until Friday to have them installed. I just don't feel comfortable with that stuff when he isn't here. Please send good vibes our way, because if it doesn't work...$1200+ for the part that we will have to replace!!

Tuesday, December 23, 2008- We go to the dentist for some fillings, getting a tooth pulled and Derrick needed some skin cut out from the top of his wisdom teeth. So, the boys are ready to kill me anyway for making an appointment at 8am when there is no school, but it is always so hard to find times when they can both go that works around the classes that they are willing to miss. We are sitting in the lobby and they call Derrick back. In the meantime, Mark is doing everything possible to focus on his MP3 player and not look at the girl from his class who is apparently annoying so he didn't want to make eye contact and then have to talk to her! The lady brings out the paperwork for me to sign giving them permission to do the work. I sign Derrick's as I look at the hilighted part that shows what they are doing and how much each thing is. I think nothing of it, really, as they have pretty good insurance and my part has always been fairly reasonable. I thought that maybe $200 would be the bill-which is still not what I want to spend right before Christmas. Then she hands me Mark's permission slip to sign and as she is taking it away I notice the "patient contribution" part written in. I stopped her and asked if I could look at both of those again! It went something like this:
"Is this how much it is going to cost?"
"Yes."
"You mean that this is my portion? This is what I have to pay?"
"Yes."
"I don't have that kind of money today!"
I could finish, but you get the jist! I have no heat and they wanted me to pay $710 for teeth! I guess that it boiled down to they only do white fillings and the insurance doesn't cover that, so $90 per filling and $309 for Derrick's skin removal (which they couldn't find where that was covered and so they were just charging me the full amount and I could have a credit if it was covered. NOT!) Do you know how long it takes to actually get a refund from them!

Anyway, I felt like a horrible mom walking away without getting the work done on their teeth, but I just didn't have the money that day. I'm not sure what kind of clients they usually have who can just drop $710 without even thinking about it-the day before Christmas Eve, but maybe this place is a little too uppity for me!

Wednesday, December 24, 2008 (yes, Christmas Eve!)- I had been talking to my ex-sister-in-law the day before and she told me that it comes in three's. I asked if maybe we could just take everything that was going on and lump that into #3. Apparently not! I drop Mark at wrestling practice and head home to work on some things. I get a call about 15 minutes after I get home and it is his cousin, Riley. "Hey, Aunt Shelly. Do you think that you can come and get Mark? He hurt his arm and he is really in pain!" I pick him up and we head to the doctor to find out that he has broken it. The same arm that he broke several years ago on Christmas Day. Mark will be encouraged for the next few years to do non-active things over the holidays like play video games and watch tv!

So that was three days of our holiday vacation. Overall it was a pretty great vacation, though. By the way, is it ok to have pink for our blog color since it is a joint blog?