The Adoption Fairy Strikes Again

There's a myth, urban legend, theory, whatever you want to call it, which claims that once a family starts the adoption process, certain things happen or break or go wrong, and fixing them costs lots of money. Some say it's the devil working against the adoption, others say it's the Adoption Fairy visiting, but no matter what you call it, it seems to be unfortunately true!

We started our adoption process in April. Then Denver had one of the hottest summers ever, and our air conditioning unit broke. Totally unrepairable. In fact, we discovered that the unit was over thirty years old, so we're lucky it lasted as long as it did! We "survived" (that's a relative term) for several weeks without air conditioning until we finally broke down and bought a new one in August. We couldn't take it anymore. In a house that's almost 100 years old, fans just don't cut it, and circulation is basically nonexistent. We weren't sleeping well, we were crabby, and it was just miserable. So now we have one year to pay off a $5500 interest-free loan, but we won't have to suffer next summer.

About a month later, our water heater broke beyond repair as well. It was pretty old, so it made sense, but the timing was not ideal. $1300 and two days later, we were able to take showers and run the dishwasher again. Ugh.

For the past few weeks, the heat on the driver's side of our Jeep hasn't worked. We debated just shutting the vents and using the passenger side heat all winter, but when that went out as well, we had no choice. It's our only car, and mountain trips or mid-winter commutes just did not sound appealing without heat! So yesterday we paid $800 to have it fixed (which was actually a deal considering what had to be done), and we're hoping that the Adoption Fairy only strikes three times!

Can you see why we're doing that Puzzle Fundraiser?! Here's hoping our furnace lasts the winter...