Big Snow Early December

We have had a number of snow storms prior to Christmas, including last weekend's Nor'easter, where we picked up an additional foot!
Makes for a pretty Christmas house.

You can see the amount of snow next to the Charlie and his snow blower!

Inside, however, the fireplaces have been nice.

Summer flower pictures

Here are some photos from July, 2007. It has been a dry summer, with some heat/humidity, but overall, not too bad.

Here we have hydrangea that we bought this summer:

Next, echinacea - they really look great when they are all open:

We recently bought a Rose of Sharon. We had nice ROS at the old house, so it is nice to see it again:

Finally, the blueberries are ripe and ready. We use nets to keep the birds away.

mmmmm blueberries

New Garage Roof

Day 1 - We took the roof off of the garage, with help from Charlie's co-workers. I woke up early to find Charlie popping through the roof, starting demolition early.

Day 1 - The roof-demolition team women worked to clear debris and pull out old nails. The roof came off quickly, with help from Eugenia.

Day 2: Charlie and his friend Greg put up the plywood. This required acrobatic activity and spiderman-like abilities! As you can see, the weather was awesome for most of the weekend!

Day 3: Charlie put up all the shingles himself - I was the shingle distributor, bring him shingles up the ladder. We had neighbors who would drive by and yell "it's getting there!" to us from time to time.

Project #1 and #2

Project #1 was the weekend of our move. Charlie put up a tarp on the roof of the garage to keep it protected from the weather.




Project #2 was Easter weekend. We went out and bought some fixtures for the bathroom and then Charlie installed them (plus he cleaned a very gross toilet). I finished up the kitchen area, putting away things and cleaning the floor. We also had our first fire in the fireplace.

April snowstorm

Yes, it does snow in April in New Hampshire. We had more snow on the ground for Easter than on Christmas Day. Charlie got out the snowblower early one morning and did the driveway.

The BIG MOVE part 2

When people ask how the move went, it is hard to not hesitate and find the words. Some words that come to mind are - painful - agonizing - oh lordy.

On Thursday of our move, the truck from Roadrunner (I'm not afraid to name names) arrived at our old house. The problem is that while two independant movers gave me similar estimates and said they would send "their biggest truck", Roadrunner sent an inferior smaller truck. Everyone knew at that moment that this would be a difficult move. We had 3 guys in the morning, who packed up our house. The foreman was cranky the entire time, saying that our sales contact had messed up on our estimate. His tone seemed to indicate that somehow we had fabricated a whole bunch of extra stuff suddenly! What he and Roadrunner failed to realize is that architects know how to use space. Charlie lived there from 1988 to today and acquired many, many things - so he knew how to use his existing space to store everything. Anyway, the truck was filled and we waited for a second truck to come.

We ran to the dump a number of times with Charlie's parents, who were extremely helpful. We dumped wood scraps, metal scraps, an entire boat. The second set (2 guys) of movers arrived early evening and realized that they had to pack their truck with things from the shed, which is an extended walk to the back yard. They plowed through until dark and we enjoyed a nice dinner at the Firehouse Pub with Charlie's parents. That night, Charlie and I slept in sleeping bags on the floor.

Friday morning was chilly and I fondly remembering moving concrete blocks to my car (Charlie keeps everything, did I mention that?) I moved a couple of loads to the new house with his parents, while Charlie attended the closings. When we all finally got together around lunch time, we knew that the truck delivery to the new house would be around 1-2 PM. We waited, we ate, we waited, and no truck. We ran errands, we waited, we cleaned, we waited. The truck finally arrived sometime near 5 or 6 PM and they had 5 guys for the 2 trucks. These guys came in tired from other moves, and were not pleased with hauling things up two flights of stairs. The first truck, which held the shed stuff, was cleared in an hour. The second truck with the house stuff, however, took much longer. It was disappointing that a number of things would not fit - such as the queen size box spring or the girl's bed frame. We ended up moving the box spring ourselves.

We were able to unpack a large number of things (especially in the kitchen) with help from Charlie's parents. There are still a large number of boxes to go.. but we're getting there!

the BIG MOVE

The days of moving are upon us. Our lives are in boxes, or wrapped in plastic. One of us has a lot of stuff, one might call him a packrat. We have more to do today and then the movers come tomorrow to pack us up in a truck.

Let the festivities begin! (see Lily and the Linksys)

Getting Ready for Our New Old House

We are packing up our house, and getting ready to move March 29/30! It seems like there is so much to do both on this house and unpacking at the new house. We actually ran out of boxes, and had to buy some at Staples last night.

I can't wait to move! I can't believe it is next week.

We have to figure out exactly how to keep plants warm, kitties fed/warm, where to sleep the night before the close with cats/plants. In the meantime, we are looking for furniture for the new house. We've been looking at craigslist hourly to find dining, living and bedroom furniture. We've seen some good deals, but it is hard to drive out to southern Massachusetts just to pick up a bed, when packing time is precious.

Will be posting more on our new house soon, including work done to the house, furniture, history, etc.