Cramming a lot in

The kids ploughed their way through the yard to the bus this morning, a mere eight inches of snow not being enough of a reason to close any schools. Of course, people are used to snow here. A vast army of snow-ploughs/plows gets manoeuvred and the roads are clear almost as soon as the last flake stops falling. Here at our rented house a contractor had been round and cleared our driveway and footpath before we knew anything about it.

I followed the children to school to attend a 'Peace Assembly' (the school doesn't observe religious festivals, so no nativity play or anything of that sort). It included contributions by just about every child, so it was enjoyable (especially some of the 2nd & 3rd graders' idiosynchratic stream-of-consciousness poems) but quite a long occasion.

I then went on to do some snow-related shopping, which left me with just enough time for lunch before I tootled round to collect all the Exiles and take them to the airport.

Five Exile passengers (three in car seats) plus their luggage was quite a squash, but we managed it. I have to admit, our trusty old Nissan Micra would not have been up to the job.

Important newsflash for Boy wardrobe-watchers: he wore his coat today! And new snowpants! And hat, scarf and gloves! If he hadn't gone and left his snow boots at school again he'd be all set for the major snowstorm due this weekend...

White here, white now

With the usual morning business seen to (kids onto the bus, Man to work) I decided to look in on our new house. I wandered around the empty rooms, tinkering with the blinds, thinking about what to put where, blu-tacking colour charts to walls. Sometime after 10am I glanced out of the window and noticed the first flurries of snow.

Uh-oh.

We were expecting this. I didn't hang around.

In the ten minutes or so it took to get home every surface turned white. The snow fell and fell, and kept on falling. Powdery snow, like icing sugar. The garden disappeared. Still the snow fell.

I began to wonder how everyone else was going to get home. The Man eventually got a lift (thank you, Exile) and was back at the house before the children.

Where were those children?

It went from getting dark to being dark, and the snow kept on falling. The bus was half an hour, forty minutes, an hour late... And suddenly there it was, chugging slow and yellow along the whited out road, the ever-smiling bus driver (my heroine!) at the wheel.

How glad I was to see them! And yet just ten minutes later I was wishing them back on the bus...

Not really. Well, only a little bit.

Here is our rented garden table, complete with eight inches of snow.

Closure

The long awaited day finally came: we closed on our new house.

It was quite a weird experience. Up to this point all negotiations had taken place via third parties, chiefly the realtors (who do slightly more for their money than estate agents do in the UK). But today we actually met the people selling the house to us (they were very nice) in a conference room together with the said realtors, lawyers and a financial advisor.

Our lawyer took us through the paperwork. My oh my, was there some paperwork - pages and pages to be signed or initialled. It took about two hours. A small forest is sacrificed for every realty transaction in this country. The sellers and the others didn't have so much to do while we developed RSI in our wrists, so they chatted amongst themselves about family matters. Between our lawyer explaining things and the background chat all I can really remember now is a flow of words about things beyond my experience: 'blah blah blah escrowed taxes blah blah liens blah blah my daughter's prom blah blah'.

Anyway, cutting to the chase, we presented the sellers with a hefty cheque (check) and we are now international persons of property. Hooray! We move in next week.

Cable Knitwork News

I tend not to watch telly during the day. I can't imagine reaching the end of my life and thinking, Darnit, I wish I'd watched more daytime TV. But today I stuck the box on while I had my lunch, flicked through the channels and came across the DIY Network.

Wow! Craft-tastic TV!

Now, I'm as keen on crafts as the next person you'll meet wandering mesmerised through Joann's.

But a knitted poinsettia wreath? Why? And who? Well, obviously devotees of Knitty Gritty that's who. Awesome!

A n'ice day at home with the kids

I'd prepared myself for ‘snow days’, but was caught out by this morning's conditions. It had rained heavily in the night, then frozen, leaving a lethal slick of ice over every flat surface. The majority of schools, including our children's, closed for the day. How was I going to entertain them all day indoors?

Luckily the Girl’s classmate from round the corner was in need of a place to play, so he came and joined us for several hours. The three kids managed to expend a lot of energy around the house in one way and another, without causing too much damage. After lunch they put on a dance show. Or at least it was more of a show about a show, in which the Girl type-cast herself as the control-freak artistic director. So that was hair-raising to watch as it wasn't always obvious where acting ended and the real Girl began. Thank goodness everyone managed to remain friends, even after the director quit.



This evening the Girl and Boy spontaneously dressed up and put on a Christmas parade, which was very...very... hard to describe in words. The Girl looked delightful as an elf, and the Boy made a charming reindeer, complete with twigs for antlers. Later he put in an appearance with a sheep-shaped tea-cosy on his head. He also briefly disguised himself rather convincingly as Santa, with beard and boots and all, but sadly for this blogger he turned camera-shy and managed to dodge the paparazzi.

Hair today...

The other week a waitress in a cafe addressed the Boy as 'Young lady'. A few days later a small child in a shop asked him if he was a girl or a boy. And just look at him last weekend at the train show... When he announced this morning that he wanted a haircut I seized the moment.

Unfortunately by the time we reached Supercuts he'd had a change of heart. It was a woeful little Boy who watched his 'bangs' (fringe) falling in clumps around him. Ah well. He managed to get over the shock of seeing his own ears and eyes again eventually.

Later we headed up to Thacher State Park for our weekly outdoor adventure. It was the usual story from the kids - howls of anti-hike outrage - but once we got there they loved stomping and skidding about in deep snow and half-frozen streams.

This evening we 'dined out' at home. The Girl had started the ball rolling by decorating the kitchen table with a Christmas candle. The Boy built a circular traintrack round it. The Girl added some china cottages, and the Boy threw in an elephant and some colourful fabric scraps. Inspired by this centrepiece, the Boy then set the table (with surprising competence for a person normally so uninterested in dining) and invited us all to his restaurant. He even put on music. After her main course the Girl danced for us. One of those moments when the day-to-day frustrations of parenthood melted away.

Abroad thoughts from home #1

And now introducing a new occasional feature, the special guest blogspot. First up we welcome Maths Expert, from Linton:

Call me an anorak but I freely admit to being just a tiny bit obsessed about the weather. 'It's your favourite programme!' the children cry and I rush in just in time to see that it'll be cloudy in the west and slightly above average temperatures in the east. I now work at the local school as a teaching assistant and particularly like the Year 8 Geography class because we (sorry, they) are studying weather systems. 'This is so interesting!' I commented the other day as we studied cloud formations - happily establishing myself as the classroom nerd. I can tell you that Linton is a great place to spot a weather front moving in, and it gets very humid in Java.

I was once caught red-handed looking up the 5-day forecast for Dubai. 'Why?' asked Mr Maths Expert. Why not? I am also not a great person to ask how my holiday went. Instead of 'yeah it was great, bit rainy a couple of days' you will get chapter and verse of 'wet on Saturday, cleared up Sunday, hot on Monday...' As those of you who suffered my return from a dreary week in Cornwall will testify. I knew all about the effect of the jetstream during our recent long wet summer and can assure all Lintonians that we are going to have a dry Christmas.

I was discussing the beauty of Western Australia recently and declared that, however lovely, I would never live there. The reason? The weather's just a bit too, well... samey. At least here, for the next few years at least, we still get windy Novembers, crispy Decembers and one week of sun somewhere around mid-July. The UK snow last made a significant appearance around about 1979 and this winter is set to be wet and windy (again). Not so for Albany, where the snow will lay deep and crisp and even for about 4 months. My only worry for our friends across the Atlantic is that one wintry day in December they will lose their snow shovel and disappear completely until April.