We made it! The worst two months of the year are in the books!

I think it’s funny that that is still my mentality. This is my 17th winter in Indiana and my internal clock still thinks that spring begins when the calendar turns to March. You would think those 17 years would have beaten that Great Plains state mentality out of me. Spring doesn’t come to Indiana until well into April. Sure, it was sunny and 63 here yesterday. But that was just a tease.

Not that Kansas City doesn’t go back-and-forth for the next two months, too. But those warm days in March always seemed a little warmer and to linger a little longer back there than they do here.

While it is supposed to be in the 50s here until late in the week, I know that you can’t really get excited about spring’s approach in Indianapolis until after the Masters has come and gone.

M had herself a big weekend. CHS did not have classes on Friday, and that is the normal day of the school’s ski trip to Michigan. She had been excited about that all year. Luckily for her one of her friends’ parents decided to take a group of girls up for the entire weekend. So rather than riding in a bus all night Thursday, skiing all day Friday, then busing overnight and arriving back at school sometime around 4:00 AM Saturday, she got to ride up with two classmates and spend the entire weekend skiing.

She seemed to have a great time. She did get hit by someone Friday, but escaped with only a headache. I’m not exactly sure what happened but am glad the collision wasn’t worse. This is the fourth time she skied this season – she is in the CHS ski club that goes to Cincinnati every Friday – and she seems to have developed some skills. She said she went down the second most difficult trails several times over the weekend. I gather that the hill in Michigan – and she was waaaaay up north, almost to the UP – was much bigger than the one they ski on in Cincinnati. All this practice should serve her well when we go to Colorado later this month for spring break.

For those of us who remained in Indy for the weekend it was relatively quiet. C knocked out some service hours on Friday night, volunteering at the St P’s fish fry. Saturday her volleyball team had their final regular season match of the year. They won in two sets to earn their second victory of the season. It was a very tight match, though, as they could just have easily lost in two sets as won. I like games like this that are evenly matched and competitive. The kids are engaged. The crowd is into it. It’s much more fun to watch.

Our basketball goal went up last Thursday, so L had a friend over yesterday to play on it and enjoy the warm day.

My personal excitement of the weekend, beyond college hoops, was climbing into our attic for the first time. About this time last year we had a leak into the ceiling of C and L’s shared bathroom. We’ve had the builders out four times over the past year to do minor exterior repairs but the leak keeps returning in winter time. They finally decided to look in the attic and discovered the exhaust fan from C and L’s bathroom was not connected to its ductwork. Their thought was the warm, wet air was blowing into the attic, and in the winter it condenses and drips down. An electrician came out to connect the ductwork last week, but the leak remained.

Sunday I figured it was my turn to look around. I spent 10–15 minutes examining everything around the fan, looking for dampness without finding any. There was a plumbing exhaust pipe near the fan, and I checked all the joints on it but found no cracks or dampness. I moved the insulation around as much as I could to try to find any wet spots on the subfloor but had no luck.

I was about to give up when my hand brushed something cool and damp a couple feet from the fan. I moved the insulation around and found that the wood support that plumbing exhaust was resting upon was soaked. This had to be it! I snapped some pictures and returned to the hallway triumphant.

Hopefully this is indeed it and a few feet of new PVC will solve the problem. And I’m very glad this popped up while we were still under warranty so the builders keep coming out to work on a fix.