It's been a big week around here!

It's another beautiful day in Denver, CO. We have been living here a little under a month and man has a lot happened.

Our friends Amy & Nikki moved here from Rockford, IL late last week. It is so wonderful having them around. They have two awesome kids, Halle and Spencer (AKA smoothie). The kids all get along great & have a lot of fun hanging out together. We used to visit Amy & Nikki once a year, when they lived outside of New York City. We have always wanted to live in the same city as them and finally we got our wish!

Antonio has been here since Tuesday and he is doing great. He had a surprise waiting for him, his own personal basketball court! So far he has spent a lot of time playing basketball, skating with his friend, Smoothie, hanging out with Halle, and doing anything we ask him to do around here. He is such a wonderful guy. I set up a blog for him earlier in the week. antoniosbigadventure.blogspot.com. Check it out. He is very funny!

We got the paint for repainting the entire house. We got some great colors. I know we need to take some photos! We are going to get back to painting over the weekend. The colors are a nice warm gray, a beautiful greenish light blue, a killer charteuse green and a lovely pink of our room. If you have seen my work, you have seen these colors. Lately, I have been pushing some new combos (in my work!), but these colors are some of my all time favorites.

Meg still hasn't found her nikon d300 charger yet, hence the lack of photos. We are such opposites! I know where everything is and she doesn't know where anything is! This is why are are such a good match peeps. Our nine year anniversary is in October. I am so lucky to have such a great partner.

I am still looking for a full time job in Denver. There are a lot of options, so I know it's going to happen soon. In the meantime, I am finishing up some freelance projects for my Asheville clients.

Tomorrow we are off to check out the Boulder Farmers Market. I can't wait. I have been dying to get over to Boulder anyway. It is supposed to be the best market around.
http://www.boulderfarmers.org

I promise to post more photos of the house this weekend. Happy Friday Peeps!

Back to Work in Denver Baby!

It's a lovely day here in Denver. I set my office up over the weekend. I cranked out some changes for the Austin Grill website this morning. I am very close to finishing up that project. I have another website that is being programmed for a farm located in Asheville, NC. I have a couple of logo projects I am set to start working on tomorrow.

Meg just put the finishing touches on Antonio's carolina blue room this morning. I spoke to Antonio today and he is so fired up about getting out here. He will be here in one week! It's unbelievable we are so close to being together daily as a family. It's very exciting and a little overwhelming to think of being full time parents. We are doing a lot of talking about the everyday workings of our household. We have a pretty good plan for how things are gong to work around here.

Mambo the cat ventured outside for the first time yesterday. He did a lot of smelling everything. Then when I bought him back inside he did not want to stay in! This morning he wanted to go out first thing. He is loving it here in Denver. We couldn't be happier about how well he is doing. In the past, he has not done very well with moving, so it was a lovely surprise, during a pretty stressful time.

We are mostly settled in. We are still finishing up a few house projects. There is a tree guy that will be taking down a tree tomorrow. It's a wild cherry tree and they break easily. It's also interfering with our ability to get high def satellite. That is not working for us at all!! We had to watch the NBA finals in standard def. Wow, can you say super fuzzy? Watching basketball in high def is the only way to go.

We are having the back door replaced. It's glass and it's ugly so that won't do! Our new handy man is here now, measuring and getting together a materials list. The new door goes up tomorrow.

I am still loving the new kitchen. I am cooking daily and loving all the room I have to spread out and make a mess like a true chef! We shopped at Sun Flower Market for the first time today and it was a great experience. They have loads of gluten free food options.

I am following up on some job leads this afternoon. There are a lot of great job options here, so I know there is a perfect job out there for me. Happy Monday!

Denver livin'!

We have been in the new house for 6 1/2 days and there has been a lot going on!

We have unpacked quite a bit. We are in the midst of having a number of things done. There is a new roof going on the new garage. We had a gas line installed yesterday for the new gas dryer. The washer and dryer got installed today. We are having built ins built put into the office. We have a tree that needs to be cut down. We need to prune the main tree of the yard, right over the deck. We had direct TV hooked up. The internet folks stopped by today and got the internets rolling, Thank god! We can't live without the internet around here, especially, with all the many things we need to figure out.

We are currently painting our bathroom an amazing martha stewart 1950's pink with chartreuse accents. Meg got THE UNC tarheel carolina blue paint for Antonio's room today. That is the color he wanted so we are hooking up our sweet boy. We will knock out his room's makeover this weekend.

Our new couch arrived today! It's awesome. It's a light grey corduroy that is super soft, it's comfy & a good looking couch. We are currently enjoying it's plushness right now!

The kitchen is the most organized so far. This is not a surprise to anyone around here. The new kitchen has 7 1/2 times the amount of counter space and about 3 times the cabinet space as the board street house in Asheville. Don't get me wrong. the kitchen worked just fine, but the new kitchen digs are amazing. We have a GE profile fridge and a gas range, and a killer mod stainless hood (leslie huntley style).

For some reason we didn't have any plates, bowls, glasses or coffee cups. I have no idea what happened to the mismatched things we have been using forever, but we were ready for an upgrade there any way. Can you say Target? We got the cutest green mod plastic plates, some new white glass coffee cups, new sliver ware and a nice set of real glasses.

Everyone is doing pretty well considering the chaos that we are all living in. Mambo the cat is doing the best for sure. He just sleeps all day, eats dinner and looks out the window each evening. He did tap on the window a little bit last night, as he is starting to be interested in going outside. The yard is totally fenced in and only has a couple gaps in the fence that I need to work on before he can go out.

We are so looking forward to getting Antonio here and going to do some serious exploring in our new city!

Day 3 & 4! We are in Denver Baby!

Thursday, we drove from Hayes, KS into Denver. We arrived in our 26 foot moving truck that was hauling our car at around 12:30. We drove right over to the new house! It was crazy driving the truck in the city. It was a tight squeeze but we just drove slow and made our way.

Somehow, we scored a parking spot for said moving truck right in front of the house. We got some help from some construction workers across the street parking the big truck and moving the car dolly into the garage so no one would steal it, before we could return it on Friday afternoon. We met about 5 different neighbors that first day. Everyone was super nice and happy to see someone moving into our house. She had been empty for a while.

When we walked up to the front door we had a homemade sign that said "welcome home y'all" with loads of purple and gold ribbons on it. Thanks Jules & Babs. What sweet family we have!

We did the walk through with the realtor and met her at the title company to sign some legal docs. By 3:00 the new house was all ours!!!!

We celebrated being in a new city, in a new house, with some amazing thai food, from one of my favorite Denver eats, Swing Thai. Then we all had a 4 hour nap. Then we had left over thai food and went back to sleep.

The drive took about 23 hours total, which was not bad considering the size of the truck (26 ft diesel plus a car dolly with our kia soul on the back)! It was not a bad gig actually driving the truck. It was even fun a lot of the time. Getting off the interstate and parking the truck was pretty tricky. You can't really back up in a truck with that sort of trailer. It can be quite problematic (see Asheville to St. Louis post) but we figured out how to manage parking & getting gas and keep moving as best we could, without really stopping. I think Mambo the cat had the best deal for the ride out. He slept almost two of the three days of the drive. He did really well. We ate out of a cooler for three days, so you can imagine how amazing the hot thai food dish was Thursday afternoon.

The movers arrived at about 8:30 am on Friday to unpack the big truck. The moving guys were great. They had everything unloaded by 11:30 and drove the monster truck to get gas and back to the moving company for us, as I had had enough of driving the truck in the city on Thursday.

So far the people here are very nice and extremely responsible. We had our Satellite T.V. hooked up yesterday but we have to take a tree down to get HD. It's a signal issue. The tree is in bad shape so we would likely take it down anyway.

We are still internet less which has been pretty tough but we need a phone jack to make it work and I can't seem to find one anywhere, especially in the current state of the house. I am betting my brother in law Moe can walk me through this.

Everyone is settling in to the new house really well. We unpacked enough yesterday to set up the kitchen (somewhat), our bed (hooray) and the tv with a couple of comfy spots for some tv watching after a long day of packing. It seems like it will take a week or two to unpack. Mambo is doing great. Sleeping, eating and overall mostly his normal self which is quite usual for him in past moves. His mamas are very happy about this. Meg is missing the internet and wants to do everything right now, and she is powering it out, but I make her rest a lot too. I am just so dang happy to be on this side of things!

Antonio is still back in Asheville with one of his best friends. He has school for a few more days, then he is going camping with his buddy Trevor. He flies to Denver on June 20th. Needless to say we can't wait to get him here, but have plenty to do in the meantime to prepare for his arrival.

Denver is Awseome!! Loving it. We can't wait to settle in to the house, so we can go exploring!!

Day #2 St. Louis to Hayes, KS.

Today was a great day on the road. We made great time, it was a beautiful drive from St. Louis to Hayes, KS. We are camped out at a Best Western, resting and having a rare, hot meal. Smoked Gouda cheese nachos, with guacamole. It was delicious and gluten free. Tomorrow we drive to Denver, CO. We are headed right to my favorite Denver eats, green curry from swing thai. Then we do our final walk though of the new house, and get the keys! Woot! We will be taking loads of photos over the weekend. (If we can ever find Meg's camera battery charger!) Antonio is flying to Denver on June 20th. We can't wait to be together as a family! Stay tuned!

Day #1 Asheville to St. Louis!

We are on the road to Denver. We are currently in the hotel, right outside of St. Louis. Day #1 was eventful to say the least. We left Asheville at around 1 yesterday and the drive was bumpy and a tad loud, but we laughed, talked and overall enjoyed just sitting there, relaxing and driving our stuff. We arrived at the hotel on the far side of St. Louis at around 12 o'clock central standard time.

We checked in and then I tried to park the big truck. I tried to turn around in a big parking lot, but did not make the turn. We ultimately had to call a tow service to bail us out. A nice fellow from Triple A helped us get turned around without hurting our beloved 2011 KIA SOUL, zippy louise!

After going to bed at around three we are up, making a plan for the day. I will write again this evening with an update of our location.