Snow Day!

Well, Christmas break is over, France was great, and now it's back to real life... or is it? We woke up this morning to find MORE snow on the ground (there were already 20 ft high drifts in the parking lots of the local stores) and not enough equipment to clear it out. We got an email letting us know that church meetings were all canceled, so we have a snowy Sunday to relax some more! Even Brutus had some fun in the snow, making snow-Brutuses.

Life is good for us here in Boston, although as you can tell from Hilary's and Heather's blogs, it was a fun break, and hard to leave. (I think my favorite things in the world are now Coleman's "Go Watah [Utah], Leah's full on laugh when her mom startles her, and Brooke's Ice Queen glare).
Renee got back at around 1:30 AM Monday night, just in time to chat with me online (it was morning for me in Paris) and go to bed. At about 4:00 AM, however, someone started ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door nonstop. Poor Renee was scared out of her wits, because he wouldn't answer, and wouldn't stop knocking. Even the upstairs neighbors tried unsuccessfully to scare him off, or to try to get him to talk. It turns out it was the downstairs neighbor, and his ceiling was leaking on him. While we were gone, the pipes in our closet (which, if any of you know, is NOT insulated, nor is it possible to keep warm, since the heater is only in the front 2 rooms) froze and burst, and so our closet flooded, and our neighbors ceiling started leaking. Renee spent the next couple of days cleaning out the closet, trying to fix the flooded stuff, and so on. Quite the adventure while I just sat on my duff listening to old PhD's talk for hours. But, we finally got the problem fixed, the plumber came quickly, and I got home late wednesday night.
We did have an interesting night last night. We finally met one of the couples who has contacted us about adoption. They are New Hampshire natives, so we drove up to Manchester to take them to dinner and talk. It's pretty hard on them, and they were so nervous, but so was Renee. I wasn't that nervous, but I think it's just because I don't think I'll get excited until the baby is in our arms with the papers signed. After all the "near hits" that we've had so far that then change their minds, it's hard to get excited (see emotional constipated = men) They seemed like nice people, and she is 16 weeks along, but they're still not even sure that they want to place the child for adoption. It seems like he wants to because he doesn't want a potential breakup (they're dating) that would be hard for a child, while she seems to want the keep the baby a bit more. Both of them are struggling, so we recommended they call the free counseling that LDS family services offers. We'll see how it goes. Well, I better go shovel the walks before it ices over...