Sunday, July 28, 2013

Days in Wichita

The boys and I went mini golfing, I went out to eat with my friends, Sarah and Amanda, to catch up before the move, we fell in love with Aunt Joanna's 6 week old kitten, we stayed the night with cousins Aidan and Owen. It will be hard not to be able to drive down to Wichita whenever we feel the need to get out of McPherson...












Family Pictures...

...on Jake's last day in McPherson.




Recap...

A lot of life and changes have happened since I last post...

* Our buyers got a cash offer on their house, which sped the selling process up very quickly. Unfortunately, their loan couldn't get sped up, but the timing ended up perfect. We had planned to leave our home on July 24th, so they took early possession on that day. They will pay us a little rent per day until the closing takes place. Ultimately, I'm thrilled my house isn't sitting vacant, which made us nervous after a past situation with us letting our Gardner home sit vacant for a week and a half. I was also SUPER nervous about the inspection... it's a 106 year old home... and we passed almost with flying colors! There was just one minor wiring issue, but the buyers took care of it. What a relief!! I did run into the inspector as he was packing up, and he just praised about what a great home we had. That helped me sleep well that night.

*Moving to CO, especially Glenwood Springs (a tourist town), is a huge adjustment. We didn't want to commit to a mortgage until we were positive our McPherson home sold. We also wanted to have a chance to get familiar with the area before we bought a home. Jake wants to be closer to work than he has been in the past. We will save gas money there... so at the end of the day, we decided to rent a condo to allow us plenty of time to find something we truly like, without settling. Going from owning mode to renting mode is challenging, but we will survive! The toughest part is you don't realize how much stuff you have until you move it, and then you find out you have way too much stuff to put in a condo, then you have to get a storage unit! Yikes!! It won't last forever...it won't last forever...

*Moving 10 hours away from McPherson meant we were moving even farther away from family/cousins/friends... we made it a point to spend a few days in Wichita and in the KC area to say some "so long for nows"... refusing to say "goodbye."

*Jake is adjusting to his new position. It's a huge change and he has a lot to learn as an HR manager, but he can handle it. He got thrown into the middle of a lot of hiring, but what's the best way to learn fast?? Get thrown in! He is super happy, at least I think he is, that we are finally out here with him. He had a long 2-3 weeks without us. I won't feel too badly for him, he had rivers to float and mountains to hike up... This, while I got to keep the house super clean and tidy, which super clean is not my thing! ;)

I'm sure there is a lot I'm leaving out here... I'll just start posting pictures. First blog post as a Colorado resident! Woohoo!

Friday, July 5, 2013

Happy 4th!

I drove 10 hours home to be with my boys on the Fourth of July. Here are six crazy cousins, ready to light it up!

The boys spent 2 days with cousin's Aidan and Owen... then 2 days with Hannah, Will,  Jack and Alex. Well, I came home to find Reece had accidentally gotten a punk in the eye. Yikes!!
Aunt Joanna told him he looked tough...

After...

Oops! Out of order... This is the before. It took a TON of fireworks to finally get this guy to be unrecognizable. Success!!
Here are a couple videos of fireworks I took to share with Jake.
A HUGE CON to leaving Kansas, is that fireworks aren't going to be fun in Colorado. I'm pretty sure they are extremely unsafe, with the wild fire threat. We may just be back in town EVERY 4th of July. And we may just invite ourselves to the Kraus house each year as well... they go way overboard with amazing fireworks. We were sad Jake had to miss it all! Thursday was his first day on the job.

Shipping Jake Off...

Jake has officially started his job in Colorado. I'm left behind to try to wrap things up... we sent the boys to Wichita to soak up some "cousin" time and caravanned with Jake to try to find a suitable place to rent until we wrap up the sale of our home.
Our sad faces... before we couldn't help but laugh.

Glenwood Canyon... a glorious sight!

One of the MANY KU signs along I70... won't see this glorious sight in CO. Basketball season will be quite the adjustment...

My last night in CO, we ate with Mark's family (Jake's former  and now current boss). They took us to this neat restaurant called The White House.
We ate pizza on the patio, the weather was amazing, and there were NO BUGS!! Not even a single fly swarming around our food! It was amazingly perfect! I whine about bugs a lot... mostly mosquitos, but they truly are out to get me! I usually find myself trapped inside this time of year. Colorado will allow me to enjoy the outdoors a bit more. :)

Swim Party

Summer birthdays!
Aidan is turning 12
Riley turned 11
William is turning 10
Samantha is turning 9
Alex is turning 6
Aidan and William

Will and Hannah

Reece, Riley, Aidan and Jack


Riley got LEGOS!!! Woohoo!!

50% of the cousins

CrEePy CoUsInS
Aidan and boys.

Alex 
Owen
Owen playing 'Marco Polo'... it's so cute! Half the time I think he is saying "Parco" and the other half, Alex is trying to get tagged and Owen just won't tag him! Too cute!! Love his little voice!

94 MPH Winds

 So when your house is on the market... storms and high winds are a bit of an inconvenience. I'm not going to whine too much, because it could have been SO much worse. We had straight line winds come through just over a week ago. There were power lines and trees down... I'm going say we lucked out with the several tree limbs we lost. It was not fun cleaning up, but there was no damage and we are thankful.
Most of our limbs came from our neighbor's tree... yay for mature trees.



Just for the drama... our sign was standing up straight before the wind...

This was humorous... this huge twig was standing straight up when we found it.

This one landed up too...

Our collection...

My poor lillies got snapped at the base.

Our neighbor lost an entire tree... Jake helped get it cut down before the night was even over.  It was a gorgeous fall tree. It turned a deep fire red. I'm sad it is gone.


The skies looked pretty amazing afterwards.

Reece, Savannah, and Riley hunting fireflies after the storm... look at the debris!