Keeping Warm

We had an interesting start to our day when Emma woke me up around 5:30am fussing. Quite frankly, I was so far into my sleep process that I was barely able to focus on the task at hand, but did realize that her room was colder than usual. I decided that the best option was to bring her into our bed for the moment and try to get her to settle down, warm up and then I'd return her to her own crib.
About 30 minutes later, I was still staring at the ceiling, waiting for her to fall asleep and listening to Daddy sleeping soundly and realized something else. The heat had not come on at all. And it was cold. I mean COLD!
I decided to bug Daddy and have him keep an eye on Ems while I checked out the thermostat downstairs. Yes, the new (to us) programmable one. It read 54 degrees and the setting was supposed to be above 60 degrees (sounds cool, but it really gets warm upstairs). The other thermometer nearby also read just 52 degrees. It was chilly, so I hit the buttons to manually change the temperature. Of course, the heat never came on. It wasn't working. In the words of my precious son, "Uh oh!"
At this point, Kendall is also awake and joins us. Daddy headed downstairs to investigate and decided to replace the "new" programmable thermostat with the old one. Again, no furnace action, so we now realize the worst has happened...we are without heat.
Troy called our heating and air people (for the record, we use MK Mechanical in our area) and left a message. Shortly thereafter, someone called back and said they would get a tech to come over in about 45 minutes (not bad for early Saturday morning). We were thrilled and hopeful that this person would help us return our home to something pleasant and warm rather than the meat locker that held us captive under about 10 blankets.
We needed to bring everyone downstairs to the playroom because it was obvious that I wouldn't be able to keep them under control in our bedroom and Troy would have allow the service tech access to our relic of a heating system. We had space heaters going full-blast and bundled the kids up. They were each wearing two or three pairs of pants and bulky sweaters or sweatshirts that would fit over their PJs. They were certainly a sight this morning and had to stay that way most of the day since it took a while to get the house warmed up again. It was all about function and not fashion, so it wasn't pretty (as you can see in the pictures).
Once the service tech arrived, he quickly figured out the problem and the heat was back on, though we still have a repair to consider. Ugh! At least it still works! We were really concerned that this could be the end of the road for our furnace and that would have been very bad with the weather we are having right now.
Mommy, Daddy and the munchkins survived the long day, though we were all looking pretty rough this evening. We took them out for a late afternoon drive and a shopping trip to Sam's before dinner at Cracker Barrel. We also did a lap around the mall just for kicks and then came home for baths and hang-time in the playroom. We are hopeful that the kids will sleep soundly until....ummm....11am would be nice, but very unrealistic. I'd take 8 or 9am at this point. :) And, just for the record, they were GREAT at Cracker Barrel. We had a nice man approach us and tell us how lucky we are to have three wonderful kids. We both agreed that we are INDEED very lucky....tired, but lucky!
Stay warm tonight.