What a week!

This has been quite a week! It started out really good, had a few sales, judged the West Side High School Art Show(AND got paid!), and I was interviewed by the Albuquerque Journal for the show.

Then, on Wednesday, our gas went out because the city is doing construction on our street. I will try to post the photos I took later. We're talking major construction, they are replacing all the sewer, water, gas and drainage lines in our neighborhood. So, anyway, there was a huge 20 foot deep hole in front of our driveway on Wednesday. Felt like an earthquake with all the heavy machinery out there. So, on with the story, the utility company came out in the evening to turn our gas back on and light our pilot lights. The guy goes to light the furnace and comes out to tell my husband he can't light our pilot light because we have a cracked heat exchanger! If he were to light it, the furnace would dump carbon monoxide into our house and kill us in the middle of the night! So, here it is, middle of winter, and we are without heat! We have two electric space heaters for the two bedrooms and thank God for our fireplace in the living room! We are hoping that our homeowners insurance will cover it, but who knows because our insurance guy hasn't returned our call yet(after two days!).

So, I may have to have a blow out sale to earn some money for a new heater. We have decided that no matter what happens, we are going to replace the gas furnace with solar heat panels, but that will cost about twice as much. Cheaper in the long run though, and better for the environment.

Anyway, it never fails, when things are going well, something always comes along to bring you back down to earth! Luckily, the snow is past and it's supposed to be warming up into the 50s this coming week.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!!

It has already been quite the winter here in Albuquerque! On the 19th we had about 3 inches and then yesterday it started snowing in the late morning and didn't stop until this morning, so we woke up to 10 inches this morning!!!

Aaron and I took a walk over to the park and then down to the river and got some great shots of the snow! The first shot is of two of my sons and their friend on the 19th during the first snow, the second shot was taken last night and the rest are from this morning. Happy New Year!

This is the most snow we've seen since we lived in Colorado, and I guess they are getting even more snow up there! According to the local news this is a record amount of snow for Albuquerque. Other parts of the city have more than a foot.

Update: It started snowing again, it may not stop until tomorrow morning. I talked with my mom who lives on the east side, closer to the mountains and she said they got around 18 inches!

Our front yard last night, before all the snow fell

Looking east on Glendale Rd.

Looking down at the park from the top of the hill

Rio Grande with ice!

Bosque trees in the snow