[Jen & Nate]

After much back and forth and much pain we have finally moved into our new house.


They didn't humor us with the "sold" sign and the U-Haul in the driveway is not ours but we finally did it.


On December 9th we met with a team of lawyers and mortgage gurus to sign our life away. Jen tallied up the total number of times we signed our names and it came to 69. It's actually only 11 times if you remove all the times they made us acknowledge that we need to have homeowner's insurance.


The first week of home ownership was snow-filled. In the first seven days of owning the house (and still not having slept there) I had already shoveled the driveway four times.


The effect was pretty sweet at Jen's parents' house with the light-covered bushes draped in a blanket of snow. It looked like one of those plug-in ceramic Christmas trees that everyone's grandmother had.


Tuesday morning started with the painters arriving at 6:30 AM. I showed set up a nice Dunkin' Donuts spread for them because America Runs on Dunkin'. Of course, all the painters were Polish and seemed to run on cigarettes.

Needless to say I had a lot of leftover coffee and donuts.


While they painted I made the first of at least a dozen runs to Home Depot, filling my car with new home essentials like shop vacs, outlet covers, and toilet seats.


The painters were able to accomplish a lot in the one day of painting, not the least of which was devaluing our bank account by thousands and thousands of dollars.


We went out to dinner with Lauren and Doug for the first time since moving here and then returned to the home only to run out to Home Depot after discovering a leak from a toilet. Then we were able to enjoy celebrate home ownership by measuring water damage to the ceiling and reseating a toilet, perhaps unnecessarily.


The worst of the snow was last weekend and we were able to take the boys outside to enjoy the snow. Instead of enjoying it Elliott tolerated it and Martin actively hated it.


They were mildly amused by the sled ride I gave them until I hit a snow bank and Martin tumbled into the snow. Since he refuses to allow gloves to be put on his hands he was not a huge fan of touching snow.

He does not believe that it is a marshmallow world. Instead, he thinks it is an inhospitable ice planet of doom.


Half way through our first week of home ownership Elliott had a rough night of screaming and not being able to be soothed. Jen took him to the doctor to find he had a double ear infection, then she took him to the pharmacy.

He was better for two days.


Then, on Friday, it happened again and it was my turn to do the clinic and pharmacy circuit. It was discovered that one ear had gotten better and the other had gotten worse. So I took him to the pharmacy again where he had a blast and was particularly happy when I purchased this Snoopy toy for him.

I think maybe the ear infections are a ruse in order to get us to take him to hang out at the pharmacy.


On the weekend it was back to work, sketching preliminary floor plans. This floor plan had actually been done before we closed on the house and, looking at it now, it is fairly inaccurate. But it gave me a good sense of where to tell the movers to put things and what I could do between trips to Ikea and Home Depot.


I also passed the time before our things were delivered by cleaning out the fridge while Lauren tackled the floors and the boys' room upstairs. I found many interesting things inside the fridge but mostly just a lot of dog hair.


Not as much interesting things as were found in the ductwork of the house. The cleaners said it had probably never been cleaned since the house was built in 1984. Judging by the dust and hair build up I could easily believe that.


Though I can't figure out how this receipt from 1975 ended up traveling to the house at some point nine years after it was built.


We split up on Saturday so I could get some work done at the house.


Meanwhile, the guys spent much of the day running Jen ragged and wrestling with each other.


On Sunday we finally had a moment to brave the single-digit temperatures and get a Christmas tree.


Unfortunately it was the last day they had the lot open so there wasn't a ton of selection. We got a fairly oddly shaped tree. I'd like to be all Charlie Brown about it and say that it's the spirit of the season that matters but at the end of the day I wish we were able to get something a little nicer.

And I also wish we hadn't run out of lights.


Last Sunday, after putting lights on 75% of the tree we also brought the boys over for their first chance to romp around our new digs. They had quite a blast running around and instantly finding things that they could fight over.


We had our first dinner at the new house, take out from a local BBQ restaurant, and it was pretty nice except for realizing every two minutes that I didn't know where plates, knives, forks, or glasses were.


This past Wednesday we said goodbye to our non-functioning wash room . . .


. . . and hello to our new, expensive washer and dryer set. It was nice being able to do wash in the most luxurious way possible but the luster of that feeling was slightly dulled by the sting in our already hurting purse.


After a week I was able to put out approxmately eighty empty boxes and four thousand pieces of paper used to pack our embarrassingly large collection of glasses and plates.


On Wednesday we slept through the night for the first time in our new home. We didn't have anything we need, or at least we couldn't find everything we needed, but it was nice to sleep under our own roof for the first time in nearly three months even if it was in a room with no blinds and boxes piled to the ceiling.


Our shabby Christmas display lit the night air in our new neighborhood, announcing to the neighborhood that we are here and this is the best we can do this year.

Temperatures have mostly in the single digits all month until winter finally was upon us and temperatures spike to a new high of 30 degrees. It felt downright balmy to be able to walk from the car to the house and not have my mustache immediately freeze solid.

The run up to Christmas is a lot shorter than in years past but with my parents on the way from Rhode Island and hosting our first Christmas dinner in our new house it is promising to be a pretty great one.

The stocking are hung by the chimney with care in hopes that one day I will figure out how to use our fireplace.

Merry Christmas!

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