I’ve been radio silent for a week or so because I couldn’t think of anything to write about other than this ridiculous snow! We are finally dug out, school is back in session, and we are resuming a “normal” schedule, or at least as normal as it’s going to get until the snow melts. “Normal” these days means that Portman has to park in a snow-made garage – an alley between two 4-foot high piles of snow that has a small opening where he can back his car in. I park adjacent to a 15-foot high pile created from all the plowing in our parking lot. To get to the car, we have to carry the kids out one at a time through the snow tunnel on our back porch so that no one gets hurt. Roman and I already had one pretty major fall in which I dropped him onto ice from about 3 feet and then fell on top of him, but thankfully neither of us was hurt! We now keep boots and other snow-appropriate footwear by the door because that’s all we can wear, and we keep a shovel in the back of each car just in case we find ourselves in a slick situation or we need to dig out a quick parking spot in DC. It’s annoying, but we’re getting used to it!

All of this time indoors has left Portman and I with no more excuses to figure out where this baby is going to sleep. I’m 31 weeks pregnant and we haven’t done a single thing to prepare, so this past weekend we tackled our biggest obstacle: our closet. At this point our plan is to temporarily use our walk-in closet as a nursery. We plan to move into a much bigger house this year, but not before the baby is 6-months old or so. We would also love for some of the kids to share rooms, but so far that has not worked out. We tried putting Harper and Roman together and here’s what happened: Both were fine for a bit, then Roman started crying as he sometimes does when he is going to sleep. Harper immediately hopped out of bed, climbed up on his crib and said “Hey buddy! It’s okay! I’m gonna sing you a song…. I love you, you love me…” and so on. This freaked Roman out beyond description and we had to promptly end their sleepover.

So anyway, on to the closet. We mercilessly divided our clothes into 3 piles: spring/summer stuff going into bins under the bed, fall/winter stuff going into vacuum-pack bags under Harper’s bed, and clothes to donate. I’m happy to report that the donations pile was by far the largest, and after two hours of cleaning, we pretty much emptied the closet.

Mid-way through the operation:

Donation pile:

Vacuum-pack pile:

It turns out that the closet is pretty darn big without all of our crap in it, so our next step is to hang some additional shelving, paint it (Portman says pink, but I don’t know how marketable a house is with a pink closet), and move in the crib. Yup, we’re putting a full-size crib in a closet. Crazy? Probably, but there’s no room anywhere else!

In addition to digging out our closet, we spent lots of time digging out Portman’s car. Portman had the bright idea to “just let it melt” rather than deal with it, and consequently his car turned into what we fondly referred to as the “salt dome,” like one of those giant domes of salt that you bake fish in. It really did resemble it! In the end we paid two neighborhood kids $50 to help us dig it out, and it took about 8 man hours to complete the task. Here’s what we had to contend with:

Portman parks in front of our house, so his car was plowed in with about 4-feet of solid ice. It was a pain in the butt (and arms, and back), but we got it dug out and now he has a nice little parking garage made of snow.

A shot of the snow tunnel to my car:
 
We enjoyed a rare opportunity to visit with the Bastos family when their flight got canceled. Harper and Katelyn picked up right where they left off over Christmas and we didn’t see them for several hours. They enjoyed a quick lunch on the counter since the little kids (Roman, Abby and Megan) took all the booster seats:


Next week Katelyn and Harper will be skiing in Steamboat – stay tuned for some super-cute photos of the ski bunnies!