American flags line the bridge over the Lamprey River.

The mills as seen from the bridge:

Our town, Newmarket, NH:

War Memorial in town:

The Parade:

The autumn colour in Dover was looking good and the weather was kind. The event drew big crowds as over 35,000 people descended on Main Street.

The American Robin is not as cute as it’s European counterpart and is actually a member of the thrush family. The two types of robin are not closely related.

Thursday February 25th – Dad arrived from London in the afternoon and we all met up at the new house after work to have a final walk around before closing on Friday. The house we purchased was a short sale which means the house was sold to us for less than the amount owed on it. Short sales are sold “as is” which means no repairs are made to the property ahead of closing. When we arrived at the house on Thursday we found the previous occupants had left a lot of their junk and trash behind. Pretty much every room had some kind of junk in it and meant that we would have to undertake a large cleanup process before we moved in. It was not the start that we had hoped for!

We returned home on Thursday night feeling somewhat deflated that the house was not 100% move in ready. With our apartment rental due to come to an end in 3 days and with time at a premium we started to pack up our stuff into boxes to prepare for the move. Unfortunately mother nature had other plans. On Thursday night a large wind storm swept through the state and left over 300,000 people without power in New Hampshire alone. The storm uprooted trees, brought down power lines, damaged buildings and caused flooding across the New England region… We lost power. Now, pitch black we continued to pack a little with candlelight but did not get very much done.

Friday February 26th – Closing Day – With no power overnight we woke up to a cold apartment. Our closing went ahead as planned in Portsmouth and by 10:30am we were officially homeowners!

The power was also out in the new house and there were 3 road closures due to flooding between our apartment and house. This made traveling between the two very challenging! We hired 1-800-GOT-JUNK to come and throw away all the stuff that had been left behind by the previous owners. This allowed us to start moving stuff in the following day.

Saturday February 27th – Moving Day – Still no power in Dover. We woke up to a couple of inches of snow on the ground. The movers turned up at 8am and moved our furniture to the new house. Dad went ahead to the new house and gave us the news we were waiting for…. POWER! Unfortunately there was still no power in Dover which we really needed so we could use the elevator to move our stuff down to the car from the 3rd floor. It was going to be a tough weekend of moving stuff down flights of stairs and avoiding road closures on the way to the new house. I discovered muscles in my legs and arms that I never knew I had. We eventually ran out of natural light and so called it a day and settled down for the night in the new house.

Sunday February 28th – Moving Day, again – With lights still out at the old place, we needed all of Sunday to continue moving out. It was a grueling day of walking up and down stairs with boxes and more boxes. Dad got to work in the new place tiling our downstairs bathroom/laundry room in preparation for the delivery of our washer and dryer delivery on Tuesday.

Monday February 1st – Moving Day, again! - I spent a couple of hours in the morning moving the last of our stuff from our apartment in Dover to our new house. I then returned our keys and said goodbye to the apartment we had spent the last 19 months in. It was a lovely apartment building in a great location and it will surely be missed. Upwards and onwards though…

Since our move in weekend from hell… we have had the kitchen and bathrooms professionally cleaned (boy did it need it!), we have painted the kitchen area and had beautiful hardwood flooring installed, had two of the bathrooms tiled, organized the attic and basement and put all our boxes away, painted and setup our dining room, and pretty much spent all our free time doing some kind of home improvement

Here are some pictures from Christmas Day and a short video:

After eating we played monopoly until late. My canny ability to avoid landing on Park Place and Boardwalk kept me in the game a few hours more than I perhaps should have! It was easily the most fun monopoly game I have had.

The following morning we woke up and opened our presents around the tree. Meghan’s parents were very generous and we came away with lots of nice gifts.

After we had opened our gifts we made our way down to Boston to see the rest of Meghan’s family. We had a delightful Turkey and Lasagna dinner with the most delicious pumpkin pie dessert courtesy of Meghan’s sister.

After dinner we made our way home again and opened our gifts from each other.

Here are some of the many generous gifts I received over Christmas: