Brooke's Extreme Peanut Butter Cup Birthday Cake, Theo Gets a Hair Cut, Fish Fries are Back, and Oh Crap, I Drilled Through a Gas Line

 

My birthday celebrating wasn't over yet. After eating out at Sushi Train we came back for chocolate peanut butter cake. 

What, no pics? I spent the whole day baking this. I messed up a few times, but it looks pretty presentable.

 

 I guess we were busy stuffing our faces. 

 

Can you spot the hidden 38?

It wasn't so hidden, but then I decided that I should crumble some peanut butter cups and put them around the numbers. It did not look better, but dang did it taste good.
 

Happy Birthday, killer bee!

Theo spent the whole week building with his PicassoTiles.

 

He's been building some amazing creations lately. 

 

Mr. Theo Baby got a much needed haircut. 

I don't think he need it. This picture doesn't do it justice. It was magnificent.

We all liked his long hair but it was needing a fresh cut. The poor hair stylist spent 10 minutes brushing it out. Theo came home and said, "I hate it!". Meadow said, at least no one will think you're a girl. Theo said, "Yeah, but now I look like an old man."

It could be worse, buddy. You could be bald.

We are pretty excited that Lenten church fish fries are back. 

The best tradition from my Catholic upbringing. The fish fry at St. Albert the Great in Longfellow is the best in Minneapolis. Might have to come back again.

Theo was too embarrassed by his hair to take his hat off.

You get not one, but two of the homemade desserts.

 

I think his hair looks pretty great.

 

I recently received a brand new unused sewing machine. Today I took some time figuring out how to use it. My old sewing machine is pretty basic. It literally only has 3 stitch settings. I'm pretty excited to see what this one can do. 

 

I was heating up my lunch when I hear Scott upstairs swearing. I assumed he had broken another board or something. He suddenly came running downstairs and I then I thought he cut himself. 

I was wrapping up nailing down any boards that were still loose in our finished attic. I literally was just going back to one board that kept squeaking every time I walked across the floor. I drilled where a joist should be, hit something hard and figured it was some hard wood. Drill a little more and air comes shooting back at me.

He starts panicking saying he thinks he hit a gas pipe because he felt air coming out of the floor. I open the door to the attic and immediately smell gas. I rush the kids out of the door and message our renters. I told the kids we need to go to the playground. As we are going down our street 3 firetrucks show up blocking off the street. 

The kids and I played while waiting to hear back from Scott. 

Since I rushed out of the house fast, I wasn't properly dressed. We walked over to another playground and were about to go to the library when we were given the okay to come back.

First the fire department shut off the gas. Apparently I was quick enough that there was no need to evacuate. A while later the gas company showed up, locked off the meter and told me to get it capped. I made a tiny hole in the long black pipe that spanned this part of the floor. I tried calling out plumbers, but since it was a Saturday I wasn't going to get anyone out until Monday.

 So per the gas company guys suggestion I cut the pipe in half and then removed it like any other plumbing. Then I'd just needed to cap each end. Theoretically this pipe was only serving the capped gas lines in the attic and elsewhere. 

We took a family walk over to Ace Hardware and to get dinner. 

We picked up two black pipe plugs and then decided it would be easier to order Domino's. Once I came back I plugged the two ends where the pipe used to span. Good as new...sort of.

Theo decided today was all red day. 

Well, we did have an emergency.

Domino's took forever and the gas company technician was still hours away. Thankfully the house was staying pretty warm.

(P.S. Brooke likes to complain that I post bad pictures of her. Yeah, let's not cut a dude's bald head in half and put him in the distorted edge of the frame.

 

If the pizza or kids are cute no one is paying attention to anything else - per Scott. 

Nothing's cute in this pic.)

Anyways, the technician came out around 10 pm, checked my work and turned on the gas. 

Good news: no leaks and we had a working boiler and hot water heater. 

Bad news: No gas to the stove. Apparently this pipe went from the basement to our third floor, fed all the old capped gas lights and then came back through the pipe I removed, around the chimney and only then back to the stove. I wasn't going to be able to fix this, but at least we had heat and hot water until that pipe was properly replaced.

 

The next day I had deep cleaned the fish tank. Before heading out to go skiing, I noticed the fish were acting strange. 

Meadow and I got one last ski in this winter. When we got home I went to change the water filter in the fish tank and noticed the fish had died. Behind me I heard Theo's little voice say, I wish you hadn't told me that. And he ran to his room crying.

We had no way to cook other than a tiny toaster oven and microwave. So, we finally got take out from La Casa Market. And no Google it is no longer called Cinco De Mayo Mercado...

We all agreed the tacos were some of the best we've had in the cities and it's right down the block.