First impressions of Colorado...

2 weeks ago, Dan, Claire and I headed to Colorado to find a place to live! Since it was nearly the last week of school, Ashlyn & Corey stayed in Arizona with my amazing friend Ali. Dan had planned to send me alone, but I am so grateful he was able to come with me. I had never really been in Colorado, unless you count driving through or a few layovers in the Denver airport. My first impressionwas that everything was so GREEN! I kept telling Dan, "Wow. This is so different than Arizona." From the plane, it looked like farms for as far as I could see.

My second clue that I was in new territory was this sign (below) in the Denver airport!

Yikes! I didn't know Colorado was tornado country, but I should've assumed. Just one more thing to think about. I have been in some serious tornados in Michigan and Iowa when I was in Elementary school and even an extremely rare freak tornado in Utah in 1999 that killed one person. But, that's another story...

I took a bunch of pictures of the landscape. It is absolutely gorgeous! I like the cooler summer weather, the laid-back attitude, the mountains and the charming little towns. This WILL be a huge change for our family. Our church building is 10 miles from our home and I have no idea which school to choose for my kids. We have so much to learn!

We looked on our own the first day, then toured with an agent from a rental agency the next. We picked our favorite in our price range, signed the rental agreement and wrote the deposit check. Unfortunately, a few days after we returned to Arizona the homeowner would call and tell us that he had found a buyer and wouldn't be able to rent to us after all! Luckily, our very favorite home was still available and we negotiated a better price, so we are all set!

On our last day we drove to Boulder, which is only about 15-20 minutes away. The University of Colorado is there and it's a really fun city! My impression is that we'll enjoy living in a small town in the country, but that we'll love being so close to both Boulder and Denver as well!

We enjoyed being with Claire and were so thankful that the older 2 kids enjoyed staying with Ali's family. We jumped back into the craziness and had a birthday party for Corey just 4 hours after we returned home!