Heigh-ho, heigh-ho...

We've been house-fixin-uppin' fools these past couple of weeks.

When we impulsively put a bid on what would become our home last year after a 10-minute walk-through late at night, we were so enamored with the retro kitchen, cute little built-ins and other charming characteristics of our 1920s home that somehow, amidst all that excitement and anticipation, we failed to notice that approximately 70 years' worth of dust, dirt, dead and dying trees, moss, never-dying ivy and, oh yeah, CRAP that lined our basement, garage, yard and tennis court.

We've dealt with most of it this month.
Take that, Bird Tree.
Ha-ha, 20-foot section of shrubbery.
Oh my GOD what is THAT crawly thing on the front porch. SMACK!
You're history, collection of dust pans and radiator covers.
Hasta la vista, whatever-you-are that we can't identify in a corner of the basement.

We've been really fortunate that our friend Ben has been slaving away on our behalf, too. We're so lucky to have a friend like that.

We've had some good laughs, too, watching videos our neighbor kids took on the video camera that I used as a distraction when they grew tired of bringing branches and leaves to the burn pile. The videos caused a bit of seasickness at times from odd camera angles, but at least they were well-narrated.

8-year-old-girl: "Scott is pulling a branch... Ben is filling a cart... Wendy is sweeping. :: 10 minutes later:: Wendy is sweeping. Scott is pulling something in the cart. Wendy is still sweeping. I don't know where Ben went."

Tonight might have been the icing on the cake. Moments away from near-completion of Scott's 'Man Room,' AKA the rec/TV room in the basement, the Shop-Vac filter was clogged. Scott went outside to spew its contents and apparently didn't put the filter on correctly. (Hey, we had been working about 10 hours at this point.) He came back downstairs, turned it out and... the machine spit 70 years' worth of dust all over me.

Despite the mess, we all fell over in a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

And a few minutes later, we were able to stand back, admire our hard work coming to fruition, and thank our lucky stars that we're finally running out of major projects.

For now.