This week we went house hunting, "bought" a house, had the home inspection on this house (crazy inspector on the roof in a blizzard), and celebrated Nathan's birthday.  Nathan spent two nights near work b/c of the weather.  I made two hats and didn't touch my blanket--which means my 2nd arbitrary deadline will whiz by, too.  (I guess I should find a legitimate one.)

We were stood up (again!) on Sat in trying to rehome our piano.  I was very, very annoyed this time.  Craigslist people up here are flakes.  Huge flakes.  In Boston, if they weren't trying to scam you, they showed up when they said they would.  Crazy north shore nuts.  I have two more people who claim to want it.  We'll see.  I'm ready to pull out the hack saw and call a dumpster service.

Anyway, yes, we "bought" a house.  At least, our bid was accepted.  Nice 3 bed/ 2 bath house, with 2 car garage, larger yard than here, carpet (yay!--I'm a floor sitter and hardwood holds little charm for me),  and a lovely, lovely stove.  (New, gas, center burner, and clean.)  It's in West Leb, a few houses down from where friends of ours used to live, and they loved it there.

Yesterday was Nathan's birthday.  Last of the 30's.  The kids gave him all the rice and spices which was delivered a few days before.  He was happy.  :)  We had pudding pie with cherries and also pineapple ice cream.  He watched a Charlie Chaplin movie with the kids for his birthday movie, and Brigadoon with me.  We ended the day by going to sleep at a reasonable hour and Elisabeth slept through the night as her gift.

We did much shoveling this week.  It snowed like crazy on Tuesday, the day of the home inspection.  I kept checking email thinking they were going to reschedule.  Hoping they would b/c we had to leave for the duration and I didn't want to be out in that stuff!  Lil'Nathan was put on "clean-up-the-driveway-duty, but couldn't keep ahead of the snow and finally, when the inspector arrived, he just gave up.  We hung out at the library until they decided to close early b/c of the snow.  Nathan stayed in a hotel near work that night.  I spent two hours on Ravelry organizing my 287 patterns, and didn't add any new ones!

The next morning we were up to clean up the snow, since it was too dark and snowing too hard when we got home from the library (just as the inspector drove away, I might add).  What a pile!  We shoveled in 4 stages, each followed by a break and a treat.  The first was the hardest--the pile at the end of the driveway gifted by the plow (I won't share some of our thoughts on that gift).  Reward--Trader Joe's Frosted Flakes for breakfast.  Stage 2 was the rest of the driveway (and salting the frozen, packed down stuff from the inspector and realtor driving on the un-shoveled driveway the day before).  Reward--a whole Lindt truffle.  Stage 3 was the back deck and pathways.  Reward--hot chocolate.  Stage 4 was the rest of the clean up, but it started snowing again.  I had some ice and sloppy driveway stuff to clear when the snow started falling and I yelled, "Are you kidding me?!"  It was supposed to be rain!  This meant Nathan would have to stay in Leb again that night, and indeed he did.  I went in, made dinner, and told the kids not to say a word about the snow.  We woke  up to another 4 inches, totally obliterating the work of the whole previous day.

And we had to clear the driveway at 7:30 am b/c our food (125 lbs of rice, several pounds of spices, 50 lbs of pastry flour, 2 lbs of yeast... you get the idea) was being delivered. (Lil'Nathan objected much to being forced out of bed so early in order to shovel the driveway for the delivery of rice.  Rice!)  The plow had a smaller gift for us than the previous morning and it was lighter, so the work went much faster.  But we were sore and stiff from the day before and the mounds were well over our heads.  Nathan came home that night and dug trenches through the snow--the next day was supposed to be 45 degrees and the rain had already started.  The trenches were brilliant, our snow melted and ran to the street instead of puddling in the yard.

I don't have any pictures from this week.  And you probably found this the most boring entry yet.  Sorry.  Hope for better next week.  Maybe you'll get pictures of the piano disassembly!