Baby's First Valentine's | St. Paul Baby Photographer

This week has been rough people, rough.  For those that don't know, my family and I moved into a new house last summer and for the most part have truly enjoyed our new home.  Ok, so yeah, we had to buy a brand new washer and dryer right off the bat, and then we discovered the dishwasher was a big piece of junk, so in came the new dishwasher, but one thing we didn't expect was to have water rushing into our basement through the wall in the middle of winter followed by our hot water heater breaking down (again, more water this time in the middle of our utility room).  Thank God, this all happened on a weekend when my husband was here!

We fixed the water intrusion through the basement wall by fixing a gutter that was leaking near the side of the house.  Ok done.  Yes, we're still dealing with a musty smelling basement until it completely dries up and we're able to shampoo the carpet, but it was a quick and easy fix.  The hot water heater...not so much.

In our home we have 3 zoned areas that are heated (supplementally) with radiant floor heating.  Heated with the water heater.  No folks, this is no ordinary water heater.  It's the mac daddy water heater with water for the house and a boiler for the in floor heating system.  Total cost to replace? $5000.  Um, yeah, no.

Luckily, I have the best dad in the world, who was once a sort of contractor, but definitely the king of DIY'ers, who was able to come through for us and figure out a better and cheaper solution.  So, today he came over to start the installation of our new basic water heater for our house so we can do those every day things we take for granted, like showering, something I haven't seen in a few days.  And in a few months, after we do a little rearranging to the utility room, we'll have a tankless system installed to take over for the house and reconnect the in floor heat to the tank.  Voila!

For now, I just want to take a hot shower and not feel like a big greasy mess.  We've managed to "clean" ourselves, very middle-of-the-woods-camping-style, but a hot, hot shower is defintely in order.

So, anyway, that's my story for the day.  And I will leave you with these adorable photos from this 6-month photo shoot taken down at the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul.  I know this momma will never set foot inside another retail studio again. :)