And my father dwelt in a tent...

No we are not getting ready to go camping-good grief, it was 113 on Thursday and Friday last week. No the tent shown here was Aidan and Davin's temporary housing this past weekend (Friday night thru Monday night), while the girls took the office, and Eric and I got the air mattress in the family room. Why on earth would we do something so stupid for so long? Why, indeed.

Friday afternoon, I noticed that the upstairs felt a bit warm. But it wasn't until we got back from a dr appt at 3:30 that I noticed the temp had risen to 88 degrees! I called Eric right away, and after realizing the outside unit wasn't even on, I called our home warranty people. I tried to call the a/c people right after, but they wouldn't even schedule me until they recieved their email (which can take up to an hour and a half-after closing time!), so I had to wait until Monday, ugh. Thankfully, we have 2 units, so we were just fine downstairs. We shut up all the doors upstairs to keep the heat contained, but by 5 pm it was 98 in the hallway-the rooms were hotter.

So with no hope of the kids playing nicely in their rooms while I made dinner, we ate leftovers and took turns crabbing at each other. And by the time Eric got home (an hour late), we were all so hot and tired of each other that the only remedy we could think of was ColdStone (btw their marshmallow ice cream is heaven).

Bedtime upstairs was out of the question, I wouldn't even let them into their rooms to collect their belongings, Eric or I did that. We set up the tent as a way of keeping the boys contained, they did alright the first night, sleeping on top of their sleeping bags. But they faired better the next night when we put 2 afghans, 2 fleece blankets, and 2 quilts on top of their sleeping bags. Davin destroys his bed nightly, so we had to really make it hard for him to burrow through to the not-so-soft-in-the-middle-of-the-night carpet. Eme and Maddie got the office, with doors that shut. And we took our queen sized air mattress into the family room.

It is sufficient to say that everyone slept about as well as you would expect, no one going to bed until after 9:30 the first night, but awake by 5:30 the next morning-just like camping, but without the s'mores. And that we spent a lot of time at Eric's parent's house over the weekend, it's only too bad that Maddie had the pukes and the pool was out of commission.

However, that long, awful ordeal is over, for at 11 this morning a guy came out and replaced the dead motor and failing capacitor. Aidan immediatly ran to his room as soon as he walked in the door, and currently, I am the only one downstairs. Peace and quiet, just as it should be. Tomorrow I will have to clean, but for now, I'm enjoying the solitude.