Okay, to get you up to speed:
After the delay in getting the bank appraisal the mortgage company for the buyer of the Odessa house had given us a preliminary closing date of September 22nd. When I called the moving company (that I had cancelled on not once but four times this summer) and asked if we could get a moving date around the 22nd, they told me that the only moving date they had available in September was Friday, September 12th and Monday the 15th. I was really concerned about having the house packed up that early; only because if the contract fell through, we would be left with a home with no furnishings. And an empty house doesn't show as well as one fully furnished. But we had no choice so I scheduled them to come.
On Thursday afternoon the 11th, our realtor called and said that the closing date had been moved up to September 15th and that the buyers wanted possession of the house that day. Gulp! I hadn't planned on that little wrinkle. But has luck would have it we had already scheduled the movers so we were packed and loaded by about 7:30 Monday evening. The closing went smoothly and we were officially "homeless" by 2:00 pm.
I spent the night at Joyce and Paul's (thanks guys) and spent Tuesday closing bank accounts, making changes of address, and such. I spent Tuesday night again with the Piepers and on Wednesday Joyce and I had our "Last Supper" at Oie's for lunch. After a quick goodbye I hit the road and drove to Santa Fe.
I hadn't seen my brother and his kids in about a year so I figured it would be a good stopping point for the night. I got in about 6 pm and soon after Rob and I went to Zoe's work so that I could say hello to her. (August was unavailable that night so Rob arranged for us to take him to school the next morning) Rob and I had a great dinner at The Shed (yummy Chili Verde soup) and then went to the Hotel St. Francis and had the most amazing margarita I have ever laid my lips on. Sage Margarita. Say it again. Sage Margarita. Holy mother of all margaritas. If you ever get the chance to try one of those puppies -don't pass up the chance.
After a leisurely breakfast at Rob's, we said our goodbyes and I drove into Denver and managed to hit rush hour traffic in not only Colorado Springs but in Denver as well. Ugh…welcome to Colorado.
On Friday we went out to the house. It was the first time I had seen it in two months. It is absolutely gorgeous! Mark had done a preliminary walk-thru on Wednesday and the contractor told him to come back by with me sometime over the weekend to do our own walk-thru and asked us to red tag anything that we wanted fixed. By the time Mark and I finished, it looked like the house had chicken pox. The painter has quite a lot of touch-ups to do before the final walk-thru tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow, we close on the house at 2 pm!! Happy day!!
On Saturday Mark and I drove the Peak to Peak scenic route to look at the fall colors.
We knew that we needed to be on the road early because the traffic gets heavy the later in the day it gets. So we were on the road by 8 am. As predicted, the colors had started to change and the scenery was absolutely gorgeous.
We stopped all along the road and took pictures and took in the scenery. The gold colors were at their peak and they say that the reds should be in full force within the next two weeks.
The route ended in Estes Park and as luck would have it, they were having a Beer and Brats festival that day.
We stopped in at the festival and sat on the grass and ate our brats, I drank my beer and we listened to a great John Denver cover band while eating our lunch. Afterwards, we walked around the downtown area and Mark found a place to buy some peanut brittle- our only purchase in the tourist town!
Of course if you're in Estes Park you have to go to the Stanley Hotel. Well, seems like everyone else in Colorado had the same idea and they were only letting guests inside of the hotel that day. Dang!
But we did manage to find the resident herd of elk hanging out at the golf course. They didn't seem to mind all of us gawking at them and the bulls even put on a bugling show just for us.
On Sunday we went to the Parker Fall Fest.
It was held in the downtown park and all-in-all it was a nice afternoon. There were vendors set up in the downtown area and they had a HUGE farmers market that we took full advantage of. That night we stuffed ourselves on fresh corn, tomatos (me) and peaches. It was a great end to a great first weekend in Denver!
