Colorful Colorado!

We've been in CO for about four days now, and boy is it BEAUTIFUL! Helen and John have been great hosts, even if we did take them by surprise! We really didn't think we'd be in until Saturday evening, but managed to make it by three in the afternoon. We had a nice relaxing evening in the yard where the kids played and we ate a very windy dinner off of the grill. Sunday, John took us to a nearby park where we walked a trail that lead to some nice views. Mia was getting pretty full of herself, "No hands!" She insisted on walking unassisted, and it was pretty rocky for a toddler in a few places. She took quite a few spills, nothing major and kept it up until the home stretch which was spent mostly on daddy's shoulders. (gary has the laptop, so I'll have to post pictures later)

Monday was spent online and looking for houses in the morning. In the afternoon we went to check out some of them. Unfortunately, our moving truck wouldn't be able to get to a couple of them. We'd end up either parking at the foot of the driveway or downloading everything at a storage unit. Both idea's meant schlepping a lot of heavy items. We have actually managed to get on a waiting list for some of the nicer upper enlisted housing on Ft. Carson, thanks to the EFMP office. Gary requested that it be a newer unit with no carpet (meaning wood, laminate, tile or vinyl) or new carpet, no history of pets and freshly cleaned vents and ducts if applicable. He should be calling soon with our position on the list, and that will determine how aggressive we should get with off post house hunting. We would be dumb to pass the opportunity if they can get all of that done for us on post. The stuff in our price range is pretty tiny anyway, and we'd have to either pay to store or get rid of a lot of things. We need to do that anyway, but we'd like the room to sort it out.

The negative bit of the experience so far is that we woke up to find our car had been pilfered last night. John noticed that the door was open when he left for work and when Gary went out to inspect, several big ticket items were missing. They took our nice camera (the SLR), our GPS, DVD player, two cd wallets, Gary's Ipod/accessories and a dvd that was in the player. We think it had to be a younger brat, because they took cd's but left some other "grownup" things that could have been sold. We've been keeping our eyes open for those things on Craigslist and Ebay. Gary filed a report and the cop said that the pawnshops have to hold items for 30 days before selling so they can be cross matched with reports. I don't think a kid would pawn something so he's probably enjoying the Ipod, dumping the Raffi and other kids cd's and selling the rest. We think we have some of the things insured, the camera maybe, USAA is working on it. However, our deductible is $500, so with the depreciated price of all of those things, I'm not sure how far ahead we'll get.

I love Caden to bits. She said, "At least they didn't take your car!"