Goodbye Colorado House

For anyone other than Scott and I, this is just a side note, but we sold our Colorado house this past week (see inside pics HERE).  We lived in it for about two and a half years and then rented it out for three years while we lived in Illinois and our year of transition last year.  This summer we put it on the market.  We listed it for quite a bit more than we paid for it but consistent with neighborhood comps and got a full price offer within two weeks.  I think it took a little over 45 days to close, but now its all done.  Phew!  Here we are almost six years ago when we bought the house.  That house is by far the largest house we have ever lived in.  It was nice to have so much space. 

Here is our backyard in Colorado.  I thought it was small but a decent size at the time.  Compared to our yard here and in Illinois its large.

We had the house painted while we lived there.  A slightly different green and white trim.

Hard to tell in a picture but it looks a lot better.  So the house is off our hands now.  It's kind of nice to have one less thing to worry about.  And in the nearly six years since we bought it, it appreciated quite a bit!  We were also making a little bit of money renting it out, so it was a good thing.  It would have been nice to be able to sell it before we bought our house here, but we had to wait until our renters contract was up.  Oh well.

Now we only have one house to worry about.  And one is enough for right now.

 Here we are on the front step of our new house before getting in the car to head somewhere.

Another day John and Emma wanted to take another picture on the step.  I like how they left room for Grant even though he wasn't there.  Grant always needs plenty of wiggle room.

And here is a completely non-related Matthew and Grant story.  

It demonstrates their different personalities if nothing else.

Emma was sad in the car on the way home from a late soccer practice the other day.
She was crying and whimpering about the dark.
Matthew (age 9) spent the whole ride home trying to comfort her.
Matthew:  It's ok Emma.  Don't worry, it's ok. (after several minutes of this and Emma's continued whimpering)  Mom, she's so worried and I can't get her to feel better!
Me:  Emma, everything is OK.  It's dark because its night time, but we are all safe in the car.  Everything's ok.
(Emma stops whimpering...a moment of silence follows)
Grant (age 5):  (in a scary ghost voice)  OOOOOWOOOOOOOO!!!!
Whimpering resumes
Matthew:  GRANT!!

One of the kids took this picture from the front step.   A view down the street.  This week we are having our backyard landscaped.  We had our first rain of the season the weekend before they started work (other places people talk about their "first snow").  It rained and rained for days on end and our yard was a muddy mess, but the landscaping (and associated muddiness) are marching forward.  I'm looking forward to it being done.  It's supposed to take about 8 days but more rain is on its way.  Hopefully we can still get it done soon.

Temporary Living

We moved out of the house, but there are still a few things to do before we leave town.  So we are staying in temporary lodging on base.  The floor was of dubious cleanliness, so we put down a sheet whenever we put John down there.  Here are all the kids.

 John!

 He liked it when we made big waves in the sheet

We went back to the house while the movers were loading all the stuff on the truck.  John enjoys the grass one last time.

There was a very dirty spot just behind where the treadmill had been.  A testament to the hundreds of miles I have logged on there over the past 8 months or so.  Scott ran a lot on there too...when he was home. The dirt looks like it will come right up with a vacuum.   So we'll see.

 Our empty house!

And living in temporary lodging means eating out a bit.  Subway is one of our favorite places to go.  Here are the kids being silly at Subway.

 "Yeeeccch!  I've been kissed by a girl!"

Eating out at restaurants with four kids is not my favorite thing in the world.  Looking forward to having a kitchen again...although it will be more than a month til that happens.  More of our moving adventures to come.

Moving Out

It's finally happening.

We've slowly been circling in on this move.  Slowly.  I thought it would be here faster.  But the time has finally come.  I'm not eager to leave Colorado Springs, but once you know you are moving you kind of want it to get over with already so you can start settling in in a new place.  That's how I felt this time anyway.  The movers came this week to start packing our household goods.  I had a picture of Anna looking out the window when the movers brought our stuff to this house 2 1/2 years ago.  And here's Grant (who wasn't born when we moved in) watching them come to take our things.  See pictures from our move in HERE and HERE.

I took the kids to swim camp for most of the time the movers were here (they did the packing over two days and will load the truck tomorrow).  It left Scott to handle the packing alone, but I think he was more than equal to the task...especially without kids running around.  All the little people did want to inspect the work after it was done.

Every time we move I feel like I never want to buy another thing ever again.  Our family has grown a lot in Colorado.  When we moved here we had two kids, now we have four.  This is the only home Grant and John have ever had.  John is too little to care, but I hope Grant does o.k. with this transition, and the other kids as well.  And us adults too for that matter.  I'm glad the move is now underway...although it will still probably be over a month til we get into a house in Illinois.  We'll be living out of suitcases for a while.  :)  I don't even care about that.  I'm excited things are starting to happen and we get to take a little summer vacation in the middle of all the moving madness.

For Rent

Update!!  As of Monday morning (one week on the market) we have rented our house to a family coming from Japan!!  We're so excited!!

We are moving in a month or so and we decided to rent out our house instead of put it up for sale.  We found a good property manager and they came by this past week to take pictures of the house to show potential renters.  I took a few pictures before they came through.  The house wasn't in a perfectly clean state, but ok for pictures, I think.  Here is our kitchen...complete with little boys.

 Living room

 Our not so formal living room

 Dining room

 Master bedroom

 Master bath

 Kids bathroom

Matthew's bedroom

 Anna's bedroom

 Grant's bedroom

 Basement

Another view of the basement

Not shown - the yards, the main floor bathroom or basement bathroom...or basement guest room.  I hope we find a renter.

Autumn Flowers

I've been feeling a little depressed about the state of our yard lately.  Scott normally takes care of all or most things outdoor at our house and I haven't been doing a great job filling in for him.  I tried pulling weeds once this summer, but in my uber-pregnant state in the hot hot sun it was a pretty miserable experience.  So our yard needs some TLC.  My mom has been taking care of the yard a bit while she's been here helping us and it's looking a lot better.  I wanted to buy some fall flowers, even though they will die soon, just to make the yard look a little happier.  We have this big bucket in the backyard that I have always intended to fill with flowers.  Well, I actually got around to it this past week!  We put in some zinnias and Anna picked out a flower called a penta to put with them.  I think they look nice.

 Up close

We have a small place for flowers in the front too.  We planted some things in the spring and a lot of them haven't survived the long hot summer.  So I decided to try and spruce that up a little too.  Most of these plants are perennials, so they may come back next year...maybe.  :)  Here is my amazing mom putting in some of the plants.  My mom knows a lot about plants - she actually teaches a university level botany class (go Mom!!) - so she's been very helpful with all the yard stuff.

Here is Matthew, our water boy for the day.  I think he had more fun watching the water from the hose drain into the street than actually watering plants, but he was still very helpful.

 Anna picked her own outfit.  That's all I have to say about this picture.

And our flowers in front close up.  Mums, cosmos, salvia and euonymus towards the back.  I only know the names because of my mom.  :)  So we have some color in our yard for a little while.

Fire and Rain

It's been a crazy summer so far in Colorado Springs.  When we came back from our vacation in Oregon the weather was nearly 100 degrees and stayed that way for weeks with no rain, unusual for Colorado Springs summer.  As we drove back into town we passed a few wildfires but Colorado Springs was all clear.  About a week later the Waldo Canyon fire started, just outside of Colorado Springs.  Here is our first view of it from our window on Saturday June 23rd.  We didn't know what was going on at this point.

 On that same Saturday - the first views of the fire.

These pictures aren't very good but these were taken a few days later on June 26 when the fire came down the front side of the mountains into Colorado Springs and burned over 300 homes.  You can't see anything really - my pictures aren't great, but it looked like lava flowing down the mountain.  Real scary.  This was on the west side of Colorado Springs (up by the mountains and on the west side of interstate 25).  We live on the east side of 25 about 7 or 8 miles from the homes that got burned.

 June 26

More of June 26

The weather conditions were really bad for nearly two weeks.  Hot, dry and windy.

Then we finally got some rain and cooler temps.

On July 6 we got some rain...some good rain.  Here are the kids checking it out.  The firefighters made a lot of headway on the fire containment once the weather changed.  

 Then on Sunday, July 8 we got more rain.  A downpour of epic proportions and some hail to make up for the dry weather we had so far.  Unfortunately it rained so hard water started pouring from one of our window wells into our basement guest room.

Here is the wet carpet area (under the table there too) after we moved all the boxes and things away.

Luckily this happened on the day before Scott had to leave for his deployment training - he had to go in the basement a lot to get his gear together that day.  He had been down in the basement earlier in the day and all was well.  When he went down after all the rain he noticed the wet carpet.  If it had been another day I don't know how long it would have been til I went down there and noticed the flooding.  We don't go down in that room much.

Here you can see some sand on the inside of the window well

 So we moved all the boxes off the very wet carpet.  Some stuff was damaged, but it seems like nothing too crucial so far.  Scott dug out the window well on the outside which had filled with sand causing water to come in at the window, so hopefully we won't have that problem again...although I'll be watching it every time it rains.  We used towels and wet vac to get up a lot of water but the carpet is still wet.

 One of the wet boxes after we moved it.

 Scott vacuuming the wet carpet.  It was amazing how much water came up in that vacuum.

 Boxes and storage stuff I moved into the hallway.

The next morning we took Scott to the airport super early so we've be battling the wet carpet on our own for a while.  The kids helped me sop up more water with towels and we started running a fan in there.  The smallish fan we had seemed to be doing nothing so Monday I went to Walmart and bought two big cheap box fans.  I also vacuumed some more with the wet vac and sopped up the carpet with more towels.  After running the big fans for about 24 hours (by Tuesday afternoon) I started to notice the carpet getting drier and smelling less.  I'm hoping this means we can save the carpet and it won't be ruined.   In any case, we are happy for the rain (the fire is now 100% contained) and happy that we noticed the flooding sooner rather than later.  If I didn't notice the flooding til Monday morning after Scott was gone or later in the week and found everything wet and moldy down there I think I would have been pretty discouraged.  Now I think we have a fighting chance of getting things back to normal.  We'll see how it goes.

House Painting

We bought this house about 18 months ago and I've never been happy with the paint color.  When we first looked at the house I put it in the "No" pile because, even though it had everything we needed inside, the outside of the house looked so weird.  At least I thought so.  Later we revisited it and decided it was the house for us, but I still hated the color.  Scott said we had enough money to paint it and during our home inspection the inspector even said it was going to need paint soon 'cause the previous paint job wasn't done very well and the seams of some of the siding were showing along with some other paint problems which could cause problems down the road.  Here is the house on the frosty day of our closing.  Minty green, blue trim and red brick.  I thought it was just too many colors and the green looked bad in person.

We had the interior of our house painted before we moved in and I wasn't happy with the color.  I didn't do paint samples in the house before we painted and I was sorry.  The interior color is fine, but looks pink in the morning sunlight.  And its a little lighter than I wanted.  So for the exterior we did a few sample colors on the house before hand.  We decided to go with the color on the bottom left: "Relic."  We picked a green grey color and wanted to change the blue trim to white hoping it would go with the brick and not be too many colors.  You can see the difference between the old green and new green here...one is more blue one is more grey.

 

Before

Here's the property picture of the house paint when we moved in:

Minty green for the main part of the house with a blue trim.

 After

In this picture you can't tell the difference between the green colors very much, but in person it looks different and pretty good I think.  This green is neutral and greyish, not minty and blueish.  And the trim is now white.  I think it looks really good and our painter did a great job covering up and fixing all the places that needed caulking etc.  I'm happy with the paint job.