Not Cool

Sunday started out as a great day! We went down to my parents' house for brunch after Mass, and we ended up staying until the boys' bedtime. We played Buck Euchre, drank wine, made a snowman and generally had a nice relaxing day. If only it would have stayed that way!

But we went home and were greeted by a surprise...

There was stuff dripping out of the door of our freezer! We opened the door and encountered a very unwelcome sight: half-thawed food, liquid ice cream, and a whole assortment of formerly frozen goods that were no longer frozen. Luckily, we caught it before everything was ruined- the bottom half of the freezer was still very cold. But it wouldn't be for long, so we piled everything into a bin and Paul buried it outside in the snow.

Yes, in case you were wondering, the refrigerator wasn't cold either, so its contents were moved to the front porch (I'm thanking God that winter hit when it did! Last week, we would have lost everything we couldn't eat that night)

Our makeshift ice box

We spent the rest of the night trying to see if we could fix the problem, to no avail. This was a job for the professionals. In the morning I called Bill the Repair Guy, our neighborhood appliance repairman (good old West St. Paul), to see what he could do. Good news: Bill the Repair Guy was really nice and helpful. Bad news: it was going to cost us $500 to fix.

$500 to salvage an 11 year old refrigerator? We decided it was time to go shopping...

Sara came over to babysit so Paul and I could do some power shopping, and we were successful! We stumbled upon the last day (last day!) of an appliance sale at Lowe's, 20% off all Frigidaire refrigerators. What brand do you think we ended up with?? And did it end up costing us less than the repairs would have cost? Halleluia, YES!

So now we have a new fridge on order, and it should be here by next Tuesday. Until then we will be storing everything on the porch and eating a lot of canned food!

It hasn't looked like this since we moved in ... it sure smelled better then

One good thing to come of this mess: I was finally forced to throw out all the old food from our fridge and freezer that used to get lost in the hidden corners of our monstrosity. And yes, there were several moments of "Oh, I wonder what that used to be?" as we emptied everything out. Gross.

I'll make sure to let you all know when our new fridge arrives! I'm pretty excited about it, it's much smaller than our current giant, and it will make our kitchen seem more spacious. So in the end, I'm not sad to see our old fridge go, just sad to see the dollars disappear from the pocketbook.

But, as my dad said the moment he heard about our troubles, "Welcome to home ownership!"