Enjoy having your credit card completely paid off because it's a sure sign that something major is about to go wrong with your car or house!    Seriously, God is good.  We've been having trouble with our furnace for the last couple months.  It's a very, very old steam boiler....probably installed in the 70s.  We knew it would need to be replaced at some point.  We also knew that of late, it hadn't been working very efficiently and had developed a leak.  The repairman had been helping us try and nurse it through the winter, but the other night the Lord saw fit to take it home to furnace heaven.  Well, it was a slow death....but it got to the point where we couldn't fix it.  We couldn't keep it running safely for more than a couple hours at a time.  The leak had gotten much worse and various regulation valves were failing.  The good news is that while there are very few companies that still make residential steam boilers....our guy's supplier just happened to have the very one that we needed in Green Bay and it was shuttled over within 24 hours.  We were told that steam heat is actually very efficient for a big, old house like this....the reason people don't put it in any more is b/c noone wants to put big, expensive cast iron radiators all through their homes.  It's just too expensive at the outset.  But since we have it all in place, we definitely wanted to go that route again.  Anyway, our guy labeled us 'most urgent' on his work list and worked all day to get it installed.  Just in time for temperatures to drop below zero this weekend.

As the temp in the house dropped into the 50s, me and the kids spent the day over at the Borchardts house.  They were at work, but we did school and played with their toys.  It was a fun, quiet day.  The kids played for hours with all their old Fisher-Price toys and cars.  Hours.  No TV.  No fighting.  Amazing!  I'm super relieved that all this happened this week and not next.  Matt is leaving on a college trip on Monday for five days. I wouldn't have had the slightest idea what to do, and today it's going to be a HIGH of -3.    And, the boys want to go skiing.  HA! 

So, God is good.  Did I mention Green Bay?  Oh...speaking of Green Bay....  We got an envelope from a friend, whose sister got us the Packer tickets in December.  It's an autographed picture of Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila [he's one of the strong Christians on the team].  It says "To Matt and Tarah:  Happy Anniversary!"  and it even spells my name right!  Cool, huh?  And, he always puts "Jesus" under his signature.  On Sunday evening, we are going over to "tailgate" at the Angelos and watch the game.  Viv is making green and yellow jello in football helmet molds and green/yellow deviled eggs.  I told her I could bring yellow corn chips with my bean dip, but that was as far as I could go with the color scheme!    And of course we'll have that WI tailgating staple:  Brats!  It should be fun!

Last night, we got to the cross with little Christian.  David thought it wasn't quite true when his burden fell off b/c "we still have sin".  So we discussed how even though Christian would still sin (like all of us still do), he didn't have to bear the weight of the punishment of his sin once he trusted in Christ.  He had Someone who would bear that for him.  Like I've said, the book provides never ending opportunities for application and discussion.

Well, hope you are all warm and toasty wherever you are.  Rach, I'm waiting to hear that you've gotten moved!