This is one for the record books. 

 

We planned to spend 2 weeks vacationing in the cabin in Montana.   Bill’s brother, Jim, planned to join us from Bozeman for the first few days. 

We left Arizona on Saturday, but what is usually a 2-day drive turned into 3 days due to weather and road conditions.  So Jim arrived first — on Sunday — to discover that we had a plumbing break in the last freeze about 2 weeks ago, and the kitchen and dining room and laundry room had been flooding for a long time. 

By the time we got in on Monday afternoon, Jim already had the restoration/mitiigation team on the premises, and they had already moved all furniture and kitchen cabinets.

Tuesday, they started taking out the wood floors, only to discover what looks suspiciously like old asbestos linoleum underneath.  And there’s mold growing on the log beams under the kitchen and above the laundry room. . . .      Soooooo, Molly and I are staying at the hotel, while BC stays at the cabin with the dogs and kitty, and to keep the fireplaces going to help with drying out the cabin. 

 

We had Christmas "dinner" of Marie Callendar’s frozen turkey and stuffing dinners prepared in the microwave at the Bitterroot River Inn hotel.  (They were actually pretty tasty little dinners!)

 

Santa found the cabin and Molly had a very good Christmas, with lots of gifts from Mommy and Daddy, Santa, and Grandma Billie.  She is totally cool with all the running back and forth between the hotel and the cabin, and thinks this is just a fun adventure.  She gets to go swimming in the hotel pool each morning, then we head up the mountain to the cabin for the day. 

 

Bill and I are doing OK with all of this, too.  It’s amazing how much this baby girl has changed our lives.  None of this matters.   We are just having fun being a little family.