Full day!

This morning, Samuel left bright & early to go out of town with his buddy "C" from church (& school). C's birthday is coming up, so as a fun way to celebrate, his parents took him & 2 friends to a very cool place in a town a couple hours away. This place has an indoor water park, a giant arcade, loads of cool things for 9 year old little boys to enjoy. Tonight, I texted the mom & asked if everyone was having fun. She said yes. I told her to tell Samuel goodnight for us. His reply... "okay". ha ha! Goober! (Of course I'm not going to post details til after he's safely back home tomorrow afternoon!)

Soon after he left, Larry went to a funeral & went to retrieve my Valentine's Day gift. Remember how 1 of the diamonds fell out of my wedding ring a couple weeks ago? He got it fixed for me! I am so thrilled! I was feeling pretty 'bare' without it! Since he gave me my gift, I wanted to go ahead & give him his as well......although it doesn't compare to my ring! His gift was a fun one, something that I knew would make him smile & that he would enjoy wearing to work (at the church office!) one day this week. He may take some teasing for it, but I know he'll secretly love it! What do you think?

(In case you can't see it in the picture, it has the "superman" logo shape in the middle & it says "Captain LOVE". tee hee!)

My dad came over to assist Larry in a couple of home repairs that he wasn't 100% sure how to handle. I love seeing the 2 of them working together. I think my dad's pretty great. He's smart...in just about every topic under the sun...and he's funny. Since Larry is both of those things, it's a hoot to watch the two of them do projects together. When they were done, Larry & I moved onto another project.

You see, a few weeks ago, we both noticed a tiny little black mark on the bathroom wall next to the tub. It was down low, near the baseboard. Neither of us thought much of it....til the black mark grew bigger. Uh oh...mold! We decided that we needed to take the panel off the back of the plumbing for the shower & see if something was leaking inside. So today was the day. We took the panel off & found that the inside of the panel was moldy, too. Great...there was definately a leak! This is that wall w/ the plumbing exposed. (taken from the reflection in the mirror because I couldn't get a good angle on it otherwise!)

We looked at several things & realized that it was not coming from the area exposed by the panel. It was coming from the shower head plumbing...up higher...hidden inside the wall. :::sigh::: So out came the bigger tools & with just a few minutes' time, Larry had cut away a bigger chunk of the drywall to reach the upper plumbing area....of course, it was still hidden behind a board (see it in the pic below?), but we could get to it.Sure enough, when we turned on the water to the shower, water started going everywhere! Yikes!!!

As it turns out, it was nothing serious & it was quickly fixed. Just some new white plumbing tape stuff (I can't remember the real name for it) around the pipe that comes out of the wall into the shower & the whole thing was fixed. Unfortunately, you wouldn't be able to get to that from the front side of the shower, so it took a little work to reach it from the back & will take a bit of work to put it all back together, but at least it's done.

We've got a fan pointed into the hole in the wall for now, making sure it all gets dried out before we put things back together. With work, church & a couple of nights this week already taken up with things, it may be next weekend before my bathroom is back in order, but that's OK...it's fixed & functioning. That's all that matters.

....oh, and Captain Love fixed it! Awwww! My hero! :) (said in my best amazed wife voice....can you hear the "oh James!!!" voice from the James Bond movies?)