Goodbye Colorado!

What a busy last (we hope) week in Colorado it was! I watched Tanner on Tuesday and Thursday like normal, took Jared to preschool, had a farewell lunch with the Relief Society Presidency members (Diane Harvey, Brandi Bell, Lynn Marie Olsen) I served with, went to our pre-closing signing and packed up and cleaned our house.  I am sure there were other things too but just those things were enough.

Preschool Goodbyes

Jared and Miss Amy (Pollary)

The last two days of preschool for Jared were really fun.  They had an ABC day and played all kinds of ABC games and then spent part of the last day playing at the park and letting the caterpillars that turned into butterflies go.  Jared really loved preschool and handled saying good bye really well. I am so glad he could have such a positive preschool year.  We made a cute card for Miss Amy with this picture and a cute questionnaire that Jared answered about her attached.  I read that one of the gifts teachers really like were handmade cards so that is what we went with.  We did some fun teacher appreciation gifts for her (flowers, hurts beeswax (thanks for beeing a great teacher) and a gift card to Papa Murphy's that came in a pizza box and said "You are a SUPREME teacher) ) so I thought a card would be a nice way to end it all.  She was such a great teacher!

I really enjoyed serving with these ladies.  They were such great examples.  So generous and encouraging. They were always so willing to help me out and had such nice things to say about me.  They really made me feel good about myself and were great examples of serving in the Gospel. In church on Sunday our Bishop asked Mark and I to bear our testimonies.  We had been in the 18th ward for 4 years which is a pretty long time for that ward as it was very transient so we had gotten to know a good amount of people.  I am glad we could say good bye to all the people we got to. They said such nice things about us.  I am so glad we could help people and serve in many challenging positions.  We learned a lot and met some great people.

Diane, Lynn Marie, Aprillee and Brandi

Tanner Elliot.  Back in 2011 I filled out a profile on care.com.  Shortly after that (February) Kaylene contacted me to see if I would be willing to watch her then 7 month old little boy, Tanner.  We met and I aged to start watching Tanner.  Little did we know that 3 + years later we would be saying goodbye to him.  For the first year I watched Tanner two days a week which was perfect.  Than Kaylene got a new job and her husband Wes deployed so I watched him 5 days a week for the second year.  We finished the third year with me watching him 2 days a week again. I never thought I would watch him for so long when we started.  It was fun to get to see him turn into a little baby to a tricky (at times) toddler than a sweet polite little 3 year old. Kaylene and Wes were such great people to work with. Generous and helpful always concerned that I was happy with watching him. They always gave me a Christmas bonus and 2 weeks paid vacation a year.  They were the most amazing people to work for. I was so lucky to find them and so glad they picked me. It was a great experience. We will miss all the Elliott's. Jared and Tanner became good little buddies and Tanner was always very nice to Lydia. Kaylene brought cupcakes for them all to share on the last day. which they loved. 

When Mark and I moved to Colorado Springs without kids back in 2009 we used a 16 foot truck to move all our possessions from our 2 bedroom apartment.  It fit nicely with room to spare. Mark decided that all our stuff would again fit in a 16 foot ruck and he was right!  This made me very happy. Believe me I know how to throw things away and give them away.  Our town home was 1500 square feet (after packing is up and cleaning it I am almost positive I do not ever want a house bigger than 1800 square feet.) and we have had added 2 kids to our family since we moved in so I was impressed we could fit it all in there. It was a little tighter than in 2009 but still fit just fine.  I was surprised at how stressful this move was.  There were times when I felt completely overwhelmed and didn't know how I was going to get it all done in time. The Tuesday before we left I ran out of boxes and had to wait for some more from the grocery store so I essentially lost a whole day of packing. Living i a house with piles of stuff in the hallways and closets half empty and spread out was pretty tortuous for me. It felt so chaotic. I was so grateful when I got those last boxes and could finish up the job. I had everything I could boxed, labeled and taped about an hour before people showed up to help us load the truck. The people who helped us load the truck all commented on how great a packing job I did and how small the amount of stuff we had.  It helps when you don't have a garage and only have 2 kids.  Mark drove the van over to the storage unit and they had it all unpacked in 25 minutes!! Crazy.

We picked up our boxes from King Soopers but they had not broken them down so Jared and Lydia helped hold them for me. Note to self: do not pick up boxes when your trunk is full of stuff to donate to Goodwill.  They were good sports about it even though they were completely buried.

Plus about 10 more boxes and bags of our bedding. 

Wednesday and Thursday night I stayed up late cleaning and got it all done Friday morning, 35 minutes before the buyers came for the final walk through.  Thursday we had gone over to the Title company to sign all the papers. I really wanted to sign them without the buyers present. When we bought the house in 2010 it was a short sale and we signed everything with the sellers there. It was so awkward. I felt like we were stealing their house.  This was much nicer and faster.  I was so stressed that I wouldn't get it all done in time.  I had to take a car load of stuff over to the storage unit and when I got there I could not get the door open for the life of me. It was so very frustrating. The place wasn't open yet so I went back home to finish cleaning the upstairs then went back over at 9:00 and a very nice man helped me open the door. It took me at least 5 tries to get it! So embarrassing.  I quickly through it all in the storage shed (it looks terribly unorganized in the front now) then rushed home to load the car with all of our stuff for the summer and finished cleaning the downstairs.  The last 20 minutes when I had to sweep and mop I had Jared and Lydia sit in the car and read books and play with toys so I could clean without them running around. They did very well. I would have loved to let them just play out front but the sprinklers came on and Lydia thought it would be awesome to run through them I was not amused. But I got it done! Next time we have to do this I am closing on like a Monday where Mark can help me over the weekend. It was nuts doing all that by myself and it didn't have to be that way. I think I felt like I had to do whatever the buyers wanted but really as the seller I have "rights" too. (They were not demanding or anything I just made everything harder on myself.)  That last week was really hard for Jared and Lydia as we were so busy packing and cleaning we really didn't get to interact with them as much as we would have liked. And it was Jared; last week of preschool too so that was a change for him as well. We are all just so glad to be done.  It's amazing tom e just how expensive it is to sell your house! We paid so much money in commissions and closing costs.  We are lucky we bought the house for such a good deal that we were able to cover all the costs and make some money on it. That is a hug blessing. And now we are done, and completely debt free as we no longer have a house payment. That is pretty fun!

 Since we closed on Friday yet had family pictures planned for Monday we needed somewhere to stay those last few nights.  Our good friends the Pitcher's (Nate and Melissa) let us stay with them.  They are super nice, fun generous people and made us feel very welcome.  Jared and Lydia had fun playing with their youngest kids Talia and Tyson who are close in age to them. Mark and I did not have fun sleeping in the same room as them. Jared and Lydia have only slept in the same room a handful of times so they had a hard time settling down but we all managed to get some sleep those few nights and are so grateful to the Pitcher's.  Melissa is super sweet and crafty so she helped me make some cute bows for Lydia.  I had showed her our outfits for our pictures and mentioned that I wished I had something to tie in my shirt with the rest of our family and she came up with the perfect solution.  Cute bows for Lydia. It was fun to spend the day working with her.  I like her so much and we really miss her if we do end up moving to Virginia. (Yep still waiting on job postings.)

Friday night we went out to eat to celebrate being done and to check out the Airplane restaurant. It is one of the last things we wanted to do in Colorado Springs in case we moved away.  They literally took an old Air Force plane and made it into a restaurant. Kids could go up and sit in the pilot seat and play with all the controls. It was loud and the food was not that great but we can check it off our list.  Jared loves the movie "Planes" and was so happy to fly the plane. One of Mark's seminary student is a hostess there and was working when we went to eat.  She told Mark the following Sunday that we left at the best time.  There was a big rainstorm that night and one of the windows broke and flooded the part of the plane where we were eating!  Crazy! 

We really had a nice life in Colorado Springs.  We were very blessed and looked after while we lived there. We met great people but are just really excited to move on.  We so hope that Mark gets a new job. He really doesn't want to teach at his school anymore. We are just ready for a change and really hope it comes.