Brain Dump!

Drainage.  Windows.  Driveway.  Order of priority.  Somewhere in there, too, is a back-up sump pump with a battery.

Four weeks behind on hats.  (Needing one per week to reach my year-end goal of 50.)  I tried 3 different styles/ patterns yesterday and tore them all out in frustration.  I don't want to make hats right now.  I want to make a shawl.  A lovely shawl.  So I started it last night.  It's lovely.  More fun than a hat right now.  I'll get back to hats later.

Charlie smashed his toe.  Beautiful job--prolific amount of blood every time it was bumped for 2 days.  Then I remembered butterfly bandages.  (I love those!)  I think he's going to lose the toenail. But he wears shoes now.

We "lost" a library book.  Five days of tearing the house apart and bribing the kids ("Five bucks to anyone who finds it!") and it was finally found at the the library.  I'd checked there--3 times!--but it took a sympathetic librarian--a sub!-- to find it.  She took it upon herself--believing my story of not realizing it was a book/CD kit and therefore only returning the book--Anyway, she believed me and made some calls to unlikely departments within the library (instead of saying, "well this is where it should be if that were the case, keep looking at home"--Arrgh!) and VIOLA!  She called me with the happy news 20 mins after we got home yesterday ("I knew it would drive you crazy.").  The book was in Tech Repair, no one knows why.  (Were they trying to make a new CD for it?)  I could have hugged her through the phone!  Francine is getting cookies.  (Though not the ones I made yesterday, they didn't turn out well.)

I'm all out of Trader Joe's PB cups and chocolate covered almonds.  It was a rough week while Nathan was gone.  We won't be near a TJ's until next weekend.  I guess that means next week will have it's own brand of roughness, huh?

This time it was Charlie who forced me to have to have to explain "baby snacks" to a confused--and highly amused!--friend.  Oi!

We were... okay, I was pondering adding a dog or a cat to our family.  But since I have to close the outside door 10 times--or more!--per day, I think we shall just have to settle for taming the flies and mosquitoes who come in if we need more pets.

Mary has decided to hold off on the guinea pig breeding.  There is a high financial risk and output.  It is more of a hobby than a business venture.  She was looking for a way to help pay for current pig's food and bedding expenses, but this won't be it.

One day while Nathan was in India I watched the kids of some friends.  14 kids at my house for about an hour.  Then 11 for another hour.  Then down to 9 for an hour.  Then finally just 8 until well past bedtime.  What got us through?  Popcorn and plasma cars.

Went through our food storage and organized it.  One of us will be able to survive a year.  I think.  I hope they share.

Sara and Hudson (and Mike, too) are moving this summer, back to VA.  She's mixed about it.  I'm sad.

Lil'Nathan is on track to go to 2 scout camps this summer.  He has already done the yard sale for this ward and they are going the first week of July.  The yard sale for our Salisbury ward is next weekend and they will be scout camping the last week of July.  I hope he appreciates all the driving we do for him.  Should I charge him gas money or just clean his room while he is gone?

I bribed my kids out of a ward activity tomorrow so we can stay home and do yard work.  The price was ice cream.  The reward will be a beautiful garden and yard.  And my happy little introverted self won't have to face a big party.  Sorry, but it's true.

Two bike crashes this past week.  Yesterday Joseph wiped out and slid.  Lil'Nathan, a few days ago, managed to do something that made it appear his bike ate him... and then ran over him.  Don't know.  But he's got a doozy of a burn (!) on his shoulder as a memento.

India did not kill Nathan. (see his post from last night) Though for a while the kids and I wondered if the jet lag had.  He brought home wooden elephants for the kids.  Elisabeth's is already tusk-less, and Joseph's has  a cracked trunk.

We were busy with a lot of family history work before Nathan left.  We found a sister to my grandmother's mother that no one knew about--though she was 14 when she died!  Weird.  Still can't figure out how or why we have the Estes' family bible, but we did learn that the couple who started this bible were listed as "married and died" at age 17 in his family's family tree.  Oookay.  Tough to see how they took my great-great grandfather and his sister in and raised them with their children 20-odd years later, then, isn't it?

Joseph knows about chords on the piano, but he knows only one.  1.  One, which he pounds again and again (and again!) as his right hand plays the melody.  Same chord.  Every song.  Works for "Praise to the Man."  Not so much for "Silent Night."  Someone please help me, er, uh, him.

Okay, enough babble.  Here are the photos you come to see.

Piano

Father and Sons Camping at the Joseph Smith Memorial

(Note the look on Lil'Nathan's face.  It's his favorite, lately, and he uses it whenever he can.) 

Joseph and the newt.

Not quite fast enough for the camera timer.

Pretty, huh?

Charlie and the newt.

Pretty much gives the camping attitudes of all, doesn't it?

This one, I couldn't believe myself, so I to take a picture for proof. Yes, that's a hack saw and a piece of wood and a folding chair and no shoes.  I'll use this next time he tries to tell me he has good judgement.  Right.

Spiffy little contraption Mary built for Elisabeth.

I just love the expression on her face.

And in case you missed it on the kids' blog, here is a video of what was going on in the background while Mary and Elisabeth were riding around so sweetly.

Charlie hurt his toe later that day by trying to pull a board out from under Joseph as he was coming down the ramp!  Joseph stopped in time.  Charlie dropped the board on his toe.  Hard to really feel bad for him, though.

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!

So far in 2014

Just a listing...


We've had a lot of snow so far this season.  It snows a lot and then a day or so later, it warms up a lot, then it gets frigid again.  And our back yard is a lumpy ice rink.  Very funny to watch the dog try to race across it.  Less funny to try and walk across it to clean up after the dog.  More than one of us has clunked on our rump.  Okay, kind of funny, but rather painful.

And in addition to snow, we've had sickness.  Elisabeth started it this time, on Wed.  Joseph and Charlie joined in on Fri night.  Lil'Nathan and I got it yesterday. 

On the day before Thanksgiving, Nathan's boss asked him to look for work elsewhere--regulations are killing his business and he can't afford to keep everyone on board anymore.  Nathan had felt this coming on for a while and was really just waiting for the word from his boss.  So he immediately sent a query to a former colleague of his and a resume at her request.  Within a week he had a job interview and two weeks later (holidays and snow storms) he had an offer.  He accepted it on Friday and submitted his resignation at work.  His current employer found it bittersweet--financially good for both of them, but oh so sorry that things had to work out like this.  He starts at the end of January.

And where are we going?  We are going home.  Back to the Upper Valley.  New Hampshire/Vermont has been calling to us since we left 6+ years ago and I simply cannot believe that we finally get to go back.  It all seems a little surreal.

We've contacted our realtor and started the process for selling this house.   After he left yesterday, Nathan took the healthy kids to Lowe's and they bought paint, painting supplies, molding, and super glue.  We had dinner, cleaned up the dining room, and at 7pm began to paint.  The kids were sent to bed at 8:30.  I was able to hold out long enough to do all the trim work and finish up the dishes before I had to go to bed (hoping to avoid the illness the kids had had, but failed).  Nathan came to bed at 3am, having finally finished all by himself.  I can't get a photo that does it justice, so you'll just have to trust me that it looks great.

Teddy is going to FL.  He's going to be my mom's new baby.  I have mixed feelings about this, but it's for the best.  We are planning to send him out on Saturday.

The week before Christmas my dear friend Sara and her husband welcomed baby Hudson Paul into their lives.  It's been a long road for them and I spent all day (okay, all week, while they were waiting for him be born and then sorting out paperwork) glued to Facebook and email waiting for updates.  Tuesday Sara and Hudson are coming to visit!  I'm very, very excited.  He makes me an aunt again, and this time I'm in the same state!  (for now)  Our first attempt at meeting was snowed out.  Our second was thwarted by a sick Elisabeth.  So, here we try again.  I was looking at one of the things I knit for him, and I think it's going to be too small already.