Tia Price

Woke up this morning to frozen water pipes.  It was -4 degrees outside.  My toilet wouldn’t flush and my faucets wouldn’t work.  I had plans to do some major laundry and cleaning today to catch up from a busy week of school, work, and my husband in the hospital.  I had to rethink the wash up routine and breakfast for the family.  Then I needed to focus on a solution to the problem.  I prayed for zero to little damage and got to work.

Dad’s advice: Put a space heater near the frozen pipe to thaw it.

Neighbor’s advice:  Turn on the faucet to leave it trickling so it won’t freeze. (Too late!  Good advice for the future.)

Online advice (non-expert):  Find frozen pipe and wrap it with towels soaked in hot water until it thaws.

Water company’s advice:  Hold a hair dryer to the pipes that bring the water in from outside.

They all seemed like good advice to someone who knew nothing about plumbing or frozen pipes.  We went with the space heater advice from dad.  It worked within a couple of minutes.

My advice (and in my opinion the most important advice):  Before you do anything, make sure you know how to shut off your water in case your pipes are damaged.

Never thought my Money Merge Account might be used for something like this.

I know, who want to walk outside in the winter, right?  We get that all the time when we share our experience or invite other families to join in the fun.  You would be surprised how many people enjoy being outside in the winter time aside from the usual outdoor winter activities such as skiing, sledding, and the like.  We enjoy those activities as well but we have yet to have a decent snowfall for those activities in our neck of the woods.  So we have found an alternative.

Last year during my search for activities that my “Biggest Loser” group from work could participate in, I discovered that our local Metro Parks sponsored an Annual Winter Hike Series.  There was a hike every weekend at a different metro park.  Each park offered a short hike (usually about 1 or 2 miles) or a longer one (up to about 6 miles) and also provided hot drinks and soups following the hike.  My group loved the idea and many continued to make the hikes even after our scheduled group hike.

My family went on to attend the remaining hikes last year.  My husband and I earned a patch for completing 7 hikes.  This year we are making it more of a family outing.  Now that our girls are older they are participating in more of the hikes with us.  They hope to earn a patch this year also.  We attended our first hike this past Saturday.  Our girls did a great job and completed the two-mile hike on their own.  (A far cry from last year where cries of “I’m tired!” and “Will you carry me?” were frequent.)  They asked questions about what they saw and were more observant of their surroundings than during our summer trips to the park.  We had a great time and are looking forward to our time together in future hikes.