Micah's Getting "Pumped" to Go To Colorado!

No, I did not make him pose for this picture... in case you're wondering :)

The whirlwind continues: On Monday, the 10th, we'll be venturing out towards Colorado. We don't close on the house until 4pm, and then we'll leave after that. We plan to drive straight through so we can hopefully be there the next morning. We figured this would be the best way to keep the kids sane (and the parents) if they slept most of the way.

So, on Sunday we'll load the truck and my dad will start driving that Monday morning. He'll spend the night at some hotel along the way, and meet us in Colorado Springs later on Tuesday. He'll also be pulling one of our minivans behind the truck. I'll be driving the family in our other minivan, which will be pulling a small trailer as well. Hopefully we'll be able to fit everything.

We ended up getting the house we wanted in Colorado Springs so we'll head straight there. I hope we'll have time to show my dad some of the sites before he flies back that Friday.

The business transfer is scheduled on Aug.25th. I'll fly back Minnesota to take care of that, and then head back as my school starts orientation on the 31st.

Sara will be homeschooling Gavin this year. She's already getting plugged in to the big homeschooling community through New Life Church (same place I'm going to school). Sara's actually quite excited for the big move. I think we were both ready for a new chapter in life.

We've had a few "going away" parties so far, and I'm sure we'll be saying our final good byes to a lot of people who are helping us load the truck on Sunday. It's a little bit sad to leave people, but we know it isn't goodbye forever. We'll still come to Minnesota to visit on occasion.









There's a ton more we could be writing about, but it's been hard to find the time lately. We'll do our best to keep everyone updated on what's happening once we get out there.

Trip To Colorado

Last week Sara, Micah, and I headed to Colorado to look for a place to live. We left Thursday morning and returned on Sunday. It was a busy and somewhat exhausting time, but it was fun to see and get to know our future home of Colorado Springs.

We visited a few of the homes on our list on Thursday, but were a little discouraged with our experience by the end of the day. It's been a while since we've looked at rental properties and it's really pretty amazing how different properties can be, even in the same price range. Some places were decent, but had gross carpet stains; while others were completely trashed. Luckily, we found a couple good options on Friday. Here's a picture of the place we filled out an application for:

It's a really nice house and by far the cleanest that we looked at. Even the neighborhood seems freekishly clean... which is a good thing, but almost seems unnatural to me. Sara loves it, and that's most important. :) It's a little smaller than what we have now, but is actually much more practical with the layout, so it should suit us well for the next year.On Saturday we took a bit of time to check out some of the sites including Seven Falls and Garden of the Gods. It is incredibly beautiful out there! There's just something so majestic about mountains. We also swung by New Life Church, where I'll be going to school. It was late Saturday by then, so there weren't many people there... but at least we got a chance to walk around in the building and check it all out.

Sunday morning we left three hours early to catch our plane back to Minneapolis. EVERYTHING took longer than expected and our time quickly ran out. Once we finally got through the security check, we took off into a dead sprint to find our terminal. We showed up about 1 minute after they closed the doors to the plane (even though our plane didn't take off for another 10 minutes) The woman at the counter showed no mercy and we were forced to wait around on standby for the next two planes that were sold out. Thank God we made it on the next plane a couple hours later.

We finally made it back and then had to drive two hours north to pick up the older two kids who were at my moms house. We celebrated Micah's 2nd birthday a day early while we were there. That guy was a little trooper with all the traveling and car seats he had to endure over the previous few days. I think we're all recovering a little from the busyness of it all, but there's barely a second to take a breathe for the next month with all that we need to accomplish.

This week's goal is to get rid of as much as possible. We'll do some serious Craigslisting, and possibly have a yard sale this weekend too. The way I see it, the more we can get rid of means less stuff to move... I'm all for it.

Latest Update

Well, things are starting to fall into place although the timing is questionable. As of yesterday, I finally received confirmation that I've been accepted into the School of Worship in Colorado. This was possibly the least of my concerns, but it's good to know. That starts the beginning of September.

We also accepted an offer on our house. It was a bit less than what we hoped for, but it's a reasonable offer for the market were in... and the timing was right. The closing date is August 10th.

The business officially has a signed purchase agreement as of last week, but the big challenge now is getting the buyers financing together and the property lease set up before the mandatory Fastframe training that starts the 13th of July. If the buyer misses the training in July, he may have to wait until August to go through the training. This would really goof up our timing if I have to stick around through August. So hopefully some miraculous things will be happening in the next couple weeks to make it work with our timeline. We'll see...