Do Bad Things Happen in Threes?

Have you ever heard the old adage that bad things come in threes? Well, I'm hoping it's true, because I don't want a fourth! In the grand scheme of things, none of these inconveniences were truly that bad. In fact, they served as good reminders for us be grateful for the things we often take for granted. But they were pretty annoying when life was kind of a juggling act already.

The first thing that failed in our house was our living room blinds. The cord snapped, so they couldn't be raised or lowered. They were needing to be replaced anyway, but I wanted to paint the trim white before we got new blinds, and I hadn't found time to tackle that project yet. (I actually want to paint all the trim in our house white. I know a lot of my friends think I'm crazy, but I just love that look, and I'd love to mute some of the orangey wood in our house.) Anyway, I envisioned our window looking something like this one featured on Young House Love.

So, when the blinds broke, I set out on my quest to find some beautiful bamboo or natural wood Roman blinds even though I hadn't had a chance to paint the trim white. We ordered a set of custom blinds from Home Depot, which were beautiful but pricier than we would have liked. As soon as Dan hung the blinds, I knew they had to go back. (Sorry, honey!) They were so heavy, Dan had a difficult time raising and lowering them, and I could hardly do it at all. They were pretty, but not at all functional. So back to the store they went. In an attempt to lighten the overall load (and be kinder to our emergency fund!), I hopped online and ordered three separate natural wood blinds. I'm going to order a couple more curtains from Ikea to put between them, and I am hoping that will work. Our new blinds have arrived, but it seems that every time Dan has an opportunity to install them, Theo is sleeping. So here's what our living room window looks like right now:

If you read last week's Meal-Plan Monday post, you've already heard about our garage. That was bad thing number two. Thankfully, the overhead door company we are working with offered to do a quick (and temporary) repair, which would allow us to (gingerly) use our door until the new one comes in. In case you don't remember how stunning our garage door looked, here it is again!

How foolish I was when I was thinking the garage door was a big deal! On Monday morning, I came downstairs and told Dan that it felt colder than normal. I'm always cold, so, at first, Dan just kind of rolled his eyes and patted me on the head. When Shane came down in his robe, though, he offered to glance at the thermostat and found that the temperature of the house was well below where we normally keep it. He went downstairs to check on the state of the furnace and quickly ascertained it was something beyond his capability of fixing. As soon as the guy from the HVAC company descended the stairs, he observed a burning smell, and, sure enough, the motherboard of the furnace and fried. We could have replaced the motherboard, but the life-expectancy of this particular furnace was between 15-20 years, and it had already been churning out heat for 22 years. Not wanting to throw money at something that would fail again, we decided to replace it with a new one. Something I learned from this experience: Everyone and their mother has an HVAC company! I think we ended up with five different quotes, but we settled on the last company that stopped by, which not only carried the brand of furnace we were looking for, but gave us a price well below the competitor... with extras thrown in! We didn't have heat Monday, Tuesday, or most of Wednesday, and all the quote-getting and metal-banging was really conducive to Theo getting his naps and doing school. Except the opposite of that. But it really wasn't that bad. We all wore extra layers, threw extra blankets on top of ourselves at night, and drank lots of hot tea. I toted around a space heater throughout the day, and that really made quite a difference.

You guys, God is so good. Our blinds were a relatively minor expense, but a new garage door was more costly than that. When our furnace broke, Dan and I started to sweat, because we knew what kind of dent that would make in our emergency fund. (It seems like we've been trying to build up a 6-month emergency fund forever!) In the midst of our anxiety and frustration, we turned to God in prayer. When Dan came home from work on Monday (the very day our furnace broke), he said that our tax return had arrived, and it was much more than what we expected... Enough to cover the lion's share of a new furnace! We are so humbled and grateful that God is so very faithful.

What do you think? Do bad things really happen in threes? As I was typing this, Dan came downstairs to report that one of the blades on the ceiling fan in the boys' room is bent and making noise. Don't mind me... I'm just going to stick my fingers in my ears and sing, "La, la, la!" really loudly.