It was a journey 37 days in the making, folks…  But we finally made it.  Alice had taken to calling ever male she had contact with “Daddy,” so it could not have come soon enough.

I ‘spose there is a bunch of catching up to do, huh?  We finally arrived in Colorado just under two weeks ago.  After spending three nights in a hotel, we got the call from our title company out in Ohio that everything was good to go.  Both Nathan and I were just waiting for the other twelfth shoe to drop, but surprisingly, nothing else went wrong out in the Midwest.  We closed in Ohio at nine in the morning and had our final walk through scheduled on our Colorado house at 2:45, followed by its closing.  Of course there was a botched wire transfer that almost derailed us out here, but after (temporarily, no worries!) draining the kids’ savings accounts, everything workout just fine.

Almost.

We got to the house just in time after stopping by Old Navy to pick up a new pair of pants for The Finnster.  He had an accident while we were killing time at Garden of the Gods out here in C.Springs, and I wasn’t about ready to see our new house for the first time in person and meet our realtor with a littlin smelling like pee.  We changed him in the car, hopped out and crossed the threshold into what would be our new house in a few short hours.  My first impression was fine – it is smaller than our old house, but we had so much space that we never used in Ohio.

Oh yeah, and it was FILTHY.  And there were nail holes everywhere.  Like, check this out; how many times do you need to pound a nail in to hang it in the right spot??

There are nail holes in places I would never think a sane person would ever hang a picture.  The floors were appalling.  They clearly wasn’t a single DIY bone in the previous owners bodies.  And apparently they had no shame when it came to putting thier house on the market covered in a layer of dog hair and grime.  Oh, and the brass light fixtures?  EVERYWHERE.  Libarache would have loved it here.

Finn got to pick out his own room – and he is a little man after my own heart; “I want this one.  I can see the mountains from my window.”  Once again, the little guy has the best view in the house.  Just as we were getting ready to walk out the door and sign the papers, we hear little whine from upstairs.  There, poking out from between the railing is a little penis – Finn’s, obviously.  He had his coat on, his shoes on, and his pants around his ankles.

“Mom…  I need help.”

Oh.  Shit.

Literally.  The poor little guy was so excited, running from room to room, that he didn’t quite make it to the potty on time.  He almost made it…  Two more feet and we would have been in the clear.  There, in the middle of the floor in the bathroom, is a giant, stepped-in pile of poop.  There was poop tracked into the carpet, all over the floor, up the front of the toilet, down Finny’s legs, caked into the soles of his shoes, all over his pants…

Have I mentioned the water had been turned off?

We cleaned up as best as we could, changed him back into his peed-in jeans and headed off to closing.  There was no backing out now.  You can’t just refuse to buy a house that your son has shit all over.

Before long, our stuff arrived.  I was expecting a giant Mayflower truck to pull up in the driveway, but instead, we were greeted with this:

I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty exciting.  Like, I was all ready to have the Lost Ark carted into the living room.  Unfortunately, all that was in those mysterious, exciting looking crates was our crappy furniture.  So, as every catalogued possession I owned came through the front door, I got to check it off the list.

While I was frantically trying to find the number 267, Finn took it upon himself to start unpacking his stuff.  It was like the second coming of Santa.  He was actually gasping with joy as he pulled things out of boxes.  I forget how long two months is to a little person.

Before the ink had dried on the deed, we were ripping up the carpet.  Ugh, I can hardly explain how disguising it was.  We decided to put in cheap, Ikea laminate floors after we discovered how expensive our tastes in hardwood were.  I’m still not sure how Nathan kowtow’d to my request for the white floors…  Once we get settled and have successfully ruined these, we’ll put in real wood.  That’s our five-year plan, anyway.

We are sorta settled now.  We’ve located the closest park and have been spending a part of every day there.

I think Finn likes Colorado.  Alice doesn’t much care.  She’s just glad to have the right guy to call Dad.  Finn was really getting to be a major terror, and all of a sudden, he has taken to putting himself to bed.

My living room is looking a little bit better, though we haven’ unpacked any of our books, and I can’t really feel like I’ve moved in until the hardcovers get on the shelves.   My propensity for white furniture is really become a bit of a shock now.  Everything is all in one room.  It kind of resembles a hospital waiting room, but that will get better.  Soon. I hope.

I’m hoping we’ll paint the living room and install the base trim this weekend.  I might even get around to changing up the brass chandelier over the dining room table.

As for the kids, they just had a first – even though it’s blurry, we caught it on film.  As we were getting changed into jammies tonight, the hugged each other.  At the same time.  And liked it.  And holy crap, so did Nathan and I.

Signing off from greener pastures, this is Lisa from Another Big Bite.  Oh, hell yeah, Colo-freakin-rado.