32 weeks

We are starting week 32 of the pregnancy!  Somewhere between 5 and 8 weeks to go, most likely.  Me, my sister and niece were all born a little early, so who knows?  I plan to have everything ready by April 1, for work and at home, just in case.  I figure that if it's ready and I don't need it yet, I can kick back and relax the rest of April.

32 weeks and huge!   I don't know how my stomach can get bigger, but I've heard that it will!

Last weekend we had the baby shower, although it mostly got snowed out!  There is now a carriage full of baby things waiting to be washed and/or put away.  I also had major inspiration for the baby room decor this week.  The room is purple (my second favorite color!) and I really love the color that the room is and the way that it works with the awesome afternoon/evening sunlight, so we are keeping it purple even though the baby is a boy.  He won't be in that room forever and someday he can pick his own color.  To go along with the warm afternoon/evening glow that the room gets from sunsets over the river, I decided to decorate with a warm yellow.  So, I ordered some fabric to make a large canvas and spent the entire last day of my vacation making yellow classic Winnie the Pooh wall art.  Hopefully next weekend I can get that stuff done.

The Blizzard of '13 : Part 2

This chapter would be entitled: We're saved!  Yesterday around 10 am we finally saw what we had been waiting for, a plow.  It was no ordinary plow that took care of our street though, they sent in some sort of CAT tractor.  It had a bucket on the back and a plow on the front.  The driver was risking life and limb to free us, not to be dramatic.  Janda and I watched as this vehicle with 3 foot tall wheels spent 15 minutes trying to get up the short but relatively steep incline at the bottom of our road.  The life and limb part comes in when you consider that if he didn't make it and slid backwards down our hill there is a pretty good chance that he would be sliding into the river.

The poor guy finally made it after much maneuvering, bucking and thrashing.  He did an amazing job clearing our road, spending about an hour on a road that can't be more than 150m in length.  When he was done, we had a completely passable road (plus he called in the sander) and a snow bank outside our window that was about 12 feet tall, 20 feet long and 10 feet wide.  Of course, when you have a snow bank that big shenanigans will follow.

The tractor was stuck down on the bottom of the road for a while.

Even though the cars were shoveled, nothing else was touched yet.

The guy really "plowed" through the huge snowbanks on our street- snow was flying!

Look how much snow he was pushing up the street with each swipe!

Here is the finished pile- it is equal to our kitchen window, which is the second story!

Freedom!

The plow guy really cleared us well.

He also created a snowbank barrier so no one will end up in the river.

Here he is, hard at work.

Janda inspecting the snowbank.

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering?"  

"Sure we can make it no problem." 

"Here goes nothing!"

The Blizzard of '13

So the big blizzard plowed through New England this weekend, as forecasted.  We had yesterday off from school.  I think that we could have gone for a half day, as they had originally called, since the snow didn't get heavy til late afternoon, but Deval Patrick basically told schools to close in his press conference Thursday.  So we had a day off but no shoveling to do.  I did some cleaning and some seam ripping.

The storm was picking up in intensity starting mid-afternoon and the winds were howling by early evening.  Unfortunately those howling winds somehow knocked out power to the 7 houses on my street at 9:30 last night.  When we woke up this morning there was still no power (as we expected) and the house was chilly. Luckily we have a fireplace, so we built a fire this morning and the outage only lasted til mid-afternoon, so we're plenty warm now.

We went out mid-morning to shovel, but couldn't do too much because our road hadn't been plowed.  In fact, our road still hasn't been plowed as of 9 pm tonight.  There is a solid foot plus of snow on the entire road plus two places where there are drifts of 3 feet or higher.  I don't even know how they are going to plow the road and where they can put that snow since  we live on a dead end.  It will be interesting.

 The windows were plastered with snow in the am.

The back porch is hidden in a snowbank and the back door wouldn't open.

I got stuck in the snow bank next to the fence.

My car was in a snowbank.

The blanket of white was littered with bits of pine trees. 

The back yard was one big snowbank.   Our woodpile was mostly uncovered though- good thing since we used it to keep warm while we waited for the power to come back on.

Janda shoveling the steps; the front door was stuck shut too.

That's where the street normally is.  The snow bank at the bottom is up to the window of the first house on the street!

And we're still not plowed!