Snow Day

Portland Public Schools were closed today.* There's an inch of snow on the ground (but not on the streets), and a little more expected today. Dutch is pleased.

Skipper has serious doubts about this "snow" thing. She doesn't like getting it on her mittens. Dutch isn't helping with that.

*I know. Please don't laugh too hard at us.

We had a busy weekend, full of home improvement chores. I'm feeling pretty tired of myself - I tried to write an interesting post, and it was just annoying. So, photos for you today!

Skipper on the way to fetch Dutch from school. The 2/3rds-of-a-mile trip takes us at least half an hour.

The sun came out this weekend, and our next-door neighbors are caring for some baby rabbits. Dutch would have cuddled them all day if she could have. I understand her feelings; I've spent time with kittens and puppies, and they're cute and fun and all, but these bunnies are just so over-the-top adorable and fubsy that it's just impossible to put them down.

(The other kids are the twin sisters of one of Dutch's school friends - they live a few blocks away, and happened to stop by during the rabbit visit to see if we wanted to go to the playground with them. Because this is Portland, the entire family of five arrived on bikes.)

And Skipper finally got to try out Dutch's old balance bike. She's been agitating to ride it for weeks, and it turned out to be too big for her. However, she loves having Cook push her around on it. (He took a short break from cabinet-painting for this purpose.)

Garden help

What is this plant? It has little orange berries. What does it want me to do with it?

And is this really a bay leaf plant? What am I supposed to do with the leaves? Can I just pick them any old time and throw them in a soup? Do I need to dry them? And wait, are they really bay leaves?

update

We're settling in. There's an endless list of stuff to do, and I'm wasting some of that precious time posting photos!

This is the eagle in the living room, and one of the sconces that deeply trouble Cook. (The yogurt container holds vinegar and water for clean-up, in case you were wondering.)

This is the built-in in the living room. If you visit, you can spend some time scraping out the contact paper and the ancient wallpaper with a putty knife.

This is the kitchen. We are attempting to paint some of the cabinets, which were previously sort of dark-brownish. This is not going very well,* and the patchiness of our brushwork is making poor perfectionist Cook kind of bonkers, but our assumption that even if we did a crappy job, it would still look better than what we started with is still holding true.

This is the dining room. We will at some point paint the walls. (In a neutral color of some kind, to balance out the sky-blue and yellow rooms.)

This is the kids' room. It's already a mess.

This is Skipper's crib, assembled without a drop-side as part of the program to convince her that sharing a room with Dutch is a Big Kid privilege. She slept in it (most of) last night, and didn't fall out!**

*Apparently it's not a very good idea to paint fake wood. I'm learning so much! Also, neither Cook nor I have the faintest idea how to paint. n adulthood of renting plus a childhood of not helping around the house have left me with absolutely no home improvement skills whatsoever. I googled "How to paint" and found all sorts of advice about how to paint trim, or ceilings, or whatever, but very little about stuff like whether your last stroke should be up or down, or how much paint to put on your brush, etc. I need something remedial.

** She will. We put down a bunch of pillows on the floor.

We moved!

We met the guy who delivers the mail. We rekeyed our locks. It's official!

A Play

Ugh

Yesterday the whole family was totally out of commission, stricken with what we think was food poisoning. Skipper was unaffected, because she doesn't really eat anything, but she's got a bad cold, and was feeling a little under the weather too.* Dutch was a champ; this was her first experience of adult-style illness, in which you barf multiple times and feel bad all day** and she not only made it to the bathroom in time every time, she was cheerful and almost... stoic. This is not an adjective I have EVER used for Dutch before.

Anyway, Cook and I were pretty much either asleep all day - one of us stayed out on the couch to keep a nominal eye on the kids while they played and read. At 5, I gathered my strength and went out with Dutch to walk 250 feet to the convenience store, so I could buy the sick-people-food I'd been wishing for all afternoon. I wore my pyjamas and my glasses (the broken ones, repaired with duct tape), and felt all addled, but when we got home, the whole family sat/lay on the living room floor and ate a delicious dinner of pretzels and ginger ale. We were all asleep for the night by 8 PM. Dutch is back at school today, fully recuperated, but Cook and I are still feeling pretty crappy, though enormously better than yesterday.

Also, the popcorn ceilings are gone! And the abatement workers didn't destroy the plaster ceilings! I was finally able to get over today to see how things are going, and was much relieved.

*This was good, because it meant she better tolerated staying home all day with a bunch of zombies.

** As opposed to the small-child experience of illness, in which you barf once, feel bad for an hour, and then are perfectly fine.