Desparrois Family Christmas on the Fly Day Five

Day five started out early with a purpose. The reason was to get to the gym early and work off some of my belly full of jelly from both the Christmas Eve feast and the Christmas day feast. Not surprisingly I was sluggish and slow and the high altitude of Denver continued to be an issue for my lungs and heart to deal with.

After my workout I had to run by the hardware store to buy a new shutoff valve for a toilet. It was discovered on Christmas morning that one of the toilets in the house was leaking. When I tried to turn the valve off, it completely broke off. Luckily it had stopped the leak, but it shut off the water for the toilet. Being Christmas day, there were no stores open to buy the necessary pieces to fix it.

I knew it wouldn't be a hard fix, so I opted to do it myself rather than have my parents try to find a plumber the day after Christmas, which also happened to be a Saturday. After I got back my dad wanted to wait for me to shut off the water so all the woman folk could shower and get ready for their excursion. Both girls got some loot from Christmas that was burning a hole in their pocket and were ready to shop.

I gave Little D and AK a big kiss and told them to get me something cool! My dad and I got ready as we had plans of our own. We called Uncle Jeffy and Uncle Tom and headed out to Chicago Mike's for a mans lunch of Chicago hot dogs, fries and onion rings. Uncle Jeffy brought Cousin Teagy and Uncle Tom allowed Cousin Garrett to tag along for food, fun and fellowship.

As reported before, Papa loves Chicago Mike's and it is his number one pick to go. In fact, he likes it so much, he has burned Grandma out on wanting to go eat there. He relies heavily on the men of his family to go with him. It has become somewhat of a tradition for us to go when I am in town! 

Everyone enjoyed their food with Uncle Jeffy winning the award once again as the most eaten with taking down two jumbo Chicago dogs, onion rings and most of Teagy's corn dog. Cousin Garrett has reported that his illness has left him and his appetite is starting to come back to life. Hopefully I will get to see him back on the saddle in the eating department before I leave, as watching a hungry Garrett eat can be quite the sight to see!

After lunch it was time to head back to Papa's house and get our best plumber pants on so we could properly have the right amount of crack showing while we got to work. I tried to take the valve off, but it immediately snapped the pipe in the ceiling below. I quickly ran down to the basement to find the drop down ceiling leaking through with left over water in the pipe. I had to take out a few destroyed ceiling tiles in order to locate the break in the pipe.

I knew instantly that we were in trouble and it was going to require some skills to fix. Papa doesn't get around very well and has given some of his tools away over the years. It turns out that he didn't have a saw to cut out the old pipe and replace the new pipe. This created another trip to the hardware store to buy a pipe cutter so I could cut the pipe and return again to get the proper pipe, elbows and another new valve because the other valve was the wrong one. To make a long story short...After seven trips to a variety of hardware stores to find the correct plumbing pieces, a stressed out Papa and Grandma the job finally got done with my handy assistant Pam and happiness to use the bathroom was restored!

It was nice to be able to help my parents out and get the water flowing again. The only bad part was that we had to cancel our plans to see Tony and Lori for the evening since we didn't have a clue when we would get done with the job. 

Pam and I were hungry, exhausted and in need of an ice cold beer. We headed out to a place where the girls could play video games and we could watch the Nebraska game. The girls had a great time playing old school video games. I will say, it amazes me that they can download the most complex games in the word to their Ipads and never ask one question, but, you get them in front of Mrs. Pacman and they ask a million question on how to play!

AK noticed they had a pool table and wanted to play. She has never played before but she was in good hands learning as Pam is a former pool shark and won many bets back in the day. It was fun watching Pam teach AK and Little D the finer points of the game. Little D liked pool, but I think she liked Centipede more.

It was a great way to end a rough and stressful day. All though we had to cancel our plans with Tony I will get to see him Monday night for the Broncos game. After a long day it was time to call it a night and get ready for more fun that day six would bring!