Ginger allowing Ollie to love her for pretty much the only time I witnessed during her one week stay. I love these dogs. 

Our skiing and shopping outing. Skiing was great. Ginger tried to break loose in a parking lot when we went shopping, but all was good. 

New Year's Eve dinner and games with friends Mike and Kate. Possibly the best part: experimenting with the catapult addition they got us for Carcassone

Second to last day of moving out. 

Night two of Kevin and Rena being stranded. Weather getting a little better, people a little more energized and ready to leave the next morning (though I wanted to keep them longer!)

Night one of Rena and Kevin on their stopover on their move from Boston to Ohio. We were really hoping they'd make it to us, as they were driving in an awful snowstorm, got a flat right at the beginning of their trip and were stuck in terrible weather and traffic due to accidents, etc. along the way. We were thrilled to see them when they got here!

Christmas present hats from Ben's mom!

The only presents Ollie got were our wrapping paper, but he was pretty psyched about it!

 Our friends have classy Christmas Eve parties at their beautiful house. We attended just after a couple hours of packing stuff up at the old house. Not nearly as close as we wanted to be to being moved out and lots of snow coming!

Decorated the tree!

Unlit

Lit!

The day of the bangs incident... So, I've trimmed my bangs a bit before, last time as a collaborative effort with my mom, and this time they were just so grown out and I was so sick of it that I decided to do it myself. This wasn't one of those times that you cut a little and cut a little more and it's not quite right so you cut a little more. This was a one snip and "Oh shit!" kind of deal. Ben was outside shoveling (yay snow!) and when he came back in and I was closed in the bathroom, he got worried. I made him promise not to make fun of me and told him what had happened, and of course, when I came out, he laughed at me. I figured I'd try to get them fixed right away, but places I trusted were closed for the weekend and would continue to be closed through Christmas... (update from Jan 26 - still haven't fixed the slightly less stupid looking bangs - whoops!)

But the real highlight of the day was hanging with Frank, who visited on his way back from New Hampshire to Chicago, where he was Christmassing with his family. Note the awesome thrift shop shirt. p.s. I love living at the midpoint of friends' trips!

So, I started taking pictures when we returned to our old house so we could remember what was left. Even so, each time we (read Ben) way underestimated the amount of time and effort it would take to get the rest of the the stuff out. This is one of my "what's left" shots from 12/21. We stretched our moving efforts all the way from 12/12 to 12/30. That last 10% of the stuff was just so hard to motivate to get out of there!

Despite the fact that we were exhausted and unmotivated, I convinced Ben that we needed to get our tree on this day. We went to only two places to look for trees, which is unheard of for us, and I kind of demanded that we just get the tree we kind of liked at the second place. It's the tallest tree we've ever had and quite a bit more full and perfect than we were looking for, but we grew to love it. 

Whoops!

Sorry for the break in posts. Also, sorry that I'm gonna post a second picture from the last day I posted...

Matt and Juneau visited us on their way from New Hampshire to Michigan. Ollie and Juneau traded off toys all night, played and mostly just chilled like old friends. Wish we could see them all the time!

We had our division holiday party today, which was lovely. We had a chili competition (which I did not win), played trivia (which my team did win), and my coworkers boogied down, as pictured here.

Ollie chilling in our new home.

Wonderful friends from work brought us dinner for tonight. Soups, cornbread, and red wine. Yum!

Oh, and this:

Ben and I have matching dressers and have moved with them several times. This was the first time we realized that the drawers only fit in a certain way and that my drawers are different(ish?) than Ben's drawers. It took us so long to fit this puzzle together. I kind of thought we had gone crazy.... But anyway, it got done.

Eating pizza and wings with our amazing moving crew.

Ollie loves rain jackets...

Candles lit for the last night. Planned to make latkes today, but it didn't happen. They may be the first thing I make in our new house.

Got this picture by text this morning. My favorite little lady is wearing the shirt that my mom got her after they met this summer.

My boss seemed just as excited to give us these two items as we were to get them. It reminded me of when I used to work at Broccoli Hall and everything I mentioned that I wanted (whether it was for work or for myself), my boss's answer was "We have that in the barn." At the end of the school year, we had a graduation party at her house and I visited the barn, and it was, in fact, true.

I didn't take this picture. It's from the interwebs... But it is officially our house! We closed today and started moving things over. Yay!

Apparently this is the new style...
(If you don't know what I mean, look at Ben's feet.)

Ben and I are trying to decide whether or not we'll have cable in our new house... It would save us money and help us use our time better. But Ollie (and maybe Ben) would miss watching Sports Center...

Ben's attempt to get all the water bottles (minus his cycling water bottles) together at once for a picture. We know there are a few missing, but they're probably hiding in my car or backpack or something... Fairly impressive?

Hadley playing with a foam axe and everything plastic from the kitchen while I pack up the bedroom. Ben was so excited about the idea of her swinging around his axe.

My lips were SO chapped all day that I could not wait to put lip balm on when I got home. I took Ollie for a quick walk, sat down for a second and saw this Burt's Bees just hanging out on the couch waiting for me. I am completely shocked that Ollie didn't eat it since he was home all day with it, but yay!

I wish you could all hear the quiet snoring that goes with this picture.

Not being inspired by anything in particular today, I walked around with my phone and ended up taking a picture of my freezer. Most of what's in there is meat from our CSA, some frozen vegetables for when I need to add some green stuff to something, chicken and turkey stock... who knows what else... but we'll find out soon, when we have to unload it all and get it to our new house... next week(!?!).

Also, it's snowy outside today.

The end.

Most of Ben and my calorie intake over the past couple days

Home sick from work today with a stomach bug. This is probably the best I've looked all day.

I must admit that this picture is from yesterday, but I got this pack of dogs together again today for a walk, which was lovely despite Ollie chasing 4 deer nearly into the road. So scary!

With this purchase, I intend have a productive afternoon. Packing for the next week or so, then moving!!!

Hadley two days in a row! Just before this picture, she was grabbing and gumming her dad's head.

Bonus Picture!

Hadley knows that Ben's birthday is the BEST DAY EVER!

Yesterday was Ben's birthday and I had to work from 8:30-4:45 and 6:15-8:15, plus half an hour at each end for my commute. I thought I probably wouldn't get to see him much, which was sad (though considering the fact that he's on expedition for half of my birthdays, acceptable). But he ended up coming to visit my campus for the evening to have dinner with one of our favorite babies (and her parents) and watch a ski movie while I taught my career development program. At the end of the night, we decided to take one car home instead of two (since we'll go back to campus today to climb (even though I'm taking the day off from work)) and we had to drive Sarah and Indiedog home. With a person and two dogs (who were completely ignoring each other) in the back seat, I thought that it was the perfect opportunity to take a really cute picture. So, I tried a number of times, then took the head rest off my seat for some more success, and got some blurry dog pictures. But as I looked through the series, I realized that this creepy one of their glowing eyes was clearly the best.

Indie and Ollie say, "Hope you had a happy birthday, Ben!"

This is what I look like with a headache and exhaustion setting in. Last night, after dinner, I worked until 11:30 pm on stuff I just couldn't get done during the day. Today, I worked from 8:30 am - 8:30 pm. Tomorrow, same deal as today, but I also work a lunch program. Friday, I get to take the day off to celebrate Ben's birthday (a day late). Long short week.

So, we invited Abby over for dinner, and then I thought "Oh shit! What am I going to make?" So, as I was about to leave for work today, I opened the freezer, pulled out one of the chuck steaks from our farm share and poured basically everything I could find into a big bowl with it to leave it to marinate for the day. I came home and made a bunch of home made french fries, some horseradish mustard mayo and some chipotle mayo and eventually started thinking about the steak. I started cooking it about 15 minutes before Abby was to arrive. Seared it on each side for 2 minutes and then stuck it in the oven at 350. When Abby got here (with an amazing salad with lots of almonds and avocado), Ben and I realized it probably wouldn't be done for another 20 minutes or so. So we problem solved by taking it out of the oven, slicing it so that it was half the thickness and putting it on the electric grill for a couple minutes. After reading enough about chuck steaks that I was sure it was going to be inedibly chewy, I didn't expect much. But it turned out being one of the best steaks we've managed to make!

Yay to an amazing dinner with amazing people!

Snow fell outside my window at work all day and it was so pretty! But every time I looked at my car, it looked exactly how it had when I arrived. Hoping it starts accumulating soon so we can do some cross country skiing...

Ollie loves to jump up and catch snow balls! Yay for snow!!!!!

BEST MEAL EVER. 

Nick and Anna stopped in NH for a night after their trip to RI and brought us La Festa white buffalo chicken pizza. AMAZING!!!!

Also, we decided it was time to open our bottle of KATE THE GREAT. 

For those of you who don't know what Kate the Great is.... A few years ago, Portsmouth Brewery's Russian imperial stout Kate the Great got some crazy beer award, which brought a lot of attention to it. It gets released once a year in March and on our second year there, Ben and his friends went the day after release to get some and were told it had been long gone. So, the next year, they showed up before 6 am on release day and found out that bottles of beer had been sold out for hours based on the length of the line. People were in that line who had driven 12 or so hours to get there and wouldn't get bottles of beer. So, the next year, they had a new system - they sold lottery tickets way ahead of Kate the Great day and we bought 30 tickets at $2 each (the limit per person was 15) and we got one winning ticket that got us the ability to buy one bottle for $15. (Later that day, after 2/3 of a day of work, we went to the restaurant and waited on line for a while to sit and drink a couple glasses of it.) 

Anyway, tonight, we drank our $75 bottle of beer in celebration of Ben's upcoming birthday and Nick and Anna's visit. It was, in fact, great. 

Hi readers, I know it's been a few years, but I just decided I'm gonna try to restart my picture a day blog! Welcome to the day after Thanksgiving 2012. Today, I'm so thankful for the family and friends I have that make my life wonderful.

p.s. I think I'm gonna go back and add a pictures in for some of the days I've missed over the past couple years... We'll see how that goes...

We had an amazing friends Thanksgiving. I made mashed potatoes and roasted potatoes, winter squash with butter, brown sugar, and pecans, and gravy with lots of mushrooms. Ben and I collaborated to make a 10.5 pound turkey and Ben made an apple pie. Kate and Mike brought anadama bread, cranberry chutney, green bean casserole, stuffing, and an apple pie (a la Kate's mom). Sarah and Andrew brought wild rice with onions and cranberries, a pumpkin pie, and the cutest baby ever.

Ben and Andrew started off the day with a 50 mile bike ride (whoah!) while I started cooking a little earlier than I meant to because there just wasn't anything else to do. Mostly a calm day. One moment of panic when I tried to set the house on fire by turning the oven up to 500 without checking to see that there was the pan that the pie had dripped sugary goodness onto in there. The yummy burning smell told us and we got it all cooled down and heated up again in time for the turkey to go in.

Also, Ollie had his friend Sid over the whole time and a little craziness ensued (especially when Indie came over and was determined to teach them how to conduct themselves), but they had the best time ever.