ca-caw! ca-caw!

The last three houses we've lived in: Niamey, Niger, Moscow and Bucharest, we saw photos before we moved in, but didn't actually see the houses. We are in the foreign service, man! We have never been to the city in which we agree to live for three years, let alone choose the house. Shopping for a house on the internet didn't scare me; so what if we can't actually visit it before we buy it? At least we, not the post's housing board, get to choose which one it is.

I've been looking at properties in Tahoe since all there were were glossy property magazines. Since I splashed into the water from a slide in Meek's Bay and sat at a card table playing Aggrevation with my brother-in-law (and I think that was on he and my sister's honeymoon–which my parents and I totally crashed!) this place smells like home to me. 

Peter and I honeymooned here as well, my newly-wedding-ringed hand holding down the crossword puzzle in a cafe by the lake.

Pine needles, rocks, stars, the moon through the sugar pines, crazy crows answering Stefan's "Ca-caw!" Freezing cold, clear water, an altitude head-ache, a bright blue sky.

My somehow inner family is here, in the horse shoe pit next to the house and the chipmunks scrambling around and around the cedar trunks. My sister and neices visited first, my sister's cabin is just a few miles down the road.

We aren't even going to the lake it's so much fun to play house! Peter removed 100 screws from the walls, painted and did things with a hand saw. Turns out all those lego kits were actually putting-together-Ikea-furniture-training for Stefan. We are making Camille's room pretty.

Stefan plays harmonica by the fire, a bat flew into the house at sunset, and Peter and I came home to a place we'd never been before.