To Colorado We Go!

We have finally arrived (officially) in beautiful, snowy Colorado! The journey didn't go exactly as planned, but God's grace brought all of us home safely. The last couple of weeks in North Carolina were riddled with stresses as we realized that we were truly coming down to the wire on time. We decided to only focus on work that was required to prepare us for our final inspection on the barn. The electrical work was completed, the gas company installed our heat and water heater, and Papa Don has volunteered to be our plumber.

Dad came to visit us for Thanksgiving, a wonderful addition to the family gathered on the mountain. Only three days afterwards, he and Collier loaded up one of our vehicles and drove home to Colorado. While this left Mom and I to complete the work without our right hand man, we anticipated and prepared for our final week by completing all of the most difficult work when the boys were still in town, leaving Mom and I with tasks that we were confident that we could complete.

In order to prepare for Papa to install our plumbing (sinks and toilets) we needed to tile, grout, and seal the counter tops in the kitchen and on the bathroom vanities. We spent one day cutting granite for the kitchen and piecing it all together to make absolutely certain that we had enough tile to complete the job and to decrease the time needed to actually lay the tile with mortar.



The bathrooms turned out nicely as well. As you can see we went ahead and set the sinks in for aesthetics. We couldn't help ourselves! We wanted to see what it will look like all put together.



Here are a few other pictures of the finished product with some staging and decor.






Also, you might find it enjoyable to go on a video tour with me. You can access it HERE. Please forgive the crazy camera angles. For whatever reason it did not occur to me that I would not be able to rotate the images because I was recording a...ahem...video. I tend to be a bit technologically challenged, and to be honest I did not have my go-to guy (Collier) there to correct my blunder.

After completing the counter tops, staging a few rooms, and organizing the work shop Mom and I took off with the remainder of our belongings and little Noah. We had planned to stay at an Air Force base in Missouri after about 15 hours of driving, but they were booked. With our truck-load of tools and the puppy we really didn't want to find a hotel so we decided to keep on going. We left at 9am on Tuesday morning and arrived home at 6:15am the following morning. With two time changes, gas stops, and one sit-down meal we thought we did fairly well getting home and surprised the boys (they thought we had stopped during the night). We actually made it in time to greet Dad as he left for work.

It is so wonderful to be home! There is still much moving-in and organizing to do, but we feel relatively settled for the moment. Currently we are looking forward to our New Years Eve bonanza with all of our dear friends here in Colorado. It is wonderful to feel like we are coming home to a sweet "Colorado Family".

On Friday we decorated our Christmas tree. Pictures and updates to come!