Hey, what's all that white stuff?

We're tired, so here's a short picture blog of the 6 inches of snow we got today.

Logan shoveling (see the path he shoveled all by himself?)

Logan and daddy shoveling

Logan eating snow ice cream (snow, sweetened condensed milk, and vanilla)

Snow on our patio set - a little different than it looked in LA, eh?

Boxes, boxes everywhere

Yesterday our house was empty so we did a bunch of shopping. You know you are buying a lot of stuff when your credit card company puts a hold on your card because they see multiple hundred dollar charges at Safeway, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond etc. - true story.

We discovered a downside of living in Boulder - it's tough to make a good cup of tea here. Because of the altitude, water boils at a lower temperature, and cools off faster. As a result, the tea you brew is weak, and cools off before you can drink it. On the other hand, the point at which water boils here (about 205 degrees vs. 212 at sea level) makes a PERFECT cup of coffee - actually better than at sea level because the slightly cooler temperature protects the essential oils and volatile flavor compounds in the coffee.

Then today, the movers brought 400 boxes of stuff into our house (I kid you not, they tag everything with a number, so we know how much stuff it was), and now we miss the days when the house was empty.

The day was fraught with drama. First, the moving truck couldn't actually make it to our house because our street is at a steep angle but flattens out where it crosses the next street, and the change in angle caused the truck to bottom out. So the movers had to go rent a u-haul (Oh, sweet irony) to shuttle our stuff up the hill from 2 blocks away. Then, we discovered that several of our pieces of furniture wouldn't fit down the stairway to our basement - leaving us with several pieces of large, expensive furniture that don't fit anywhere in our house. This means we'll have to sell a bunch of stuff which we just paid to ship here from L.A. Oh, even sweeter irony. Then, the painter who was painting our master bedroom ran into some scheduling delays and didn't finish in time, so our master bedroom furniture is now in the second child's bedroom upstairs and we'll have to move it over in a day or two.

For Jeanne and I this was a really tough day. For the kids, it was freakin' nirvana as Zach got to go on a playdate for a few hours at our friends Ryan and Stephanie's house, while Logan got to basically watch TV and play computer in my home office all day (literally all day). After his playdate, Zach napped for a while and then joined Logan in watching movies on Jeanne's laptop in my office.

Finally, once the movers were gone, we took the kids out to our local kid-friendly eatery called Noodles and Company. If you don't know it, it's a chain of casual dining restaurants where you can get a variety of, you guessed it, noodles, including fantastic macaroni and cheese for the kids (or just buttered noodles if they prefer) and a variety of Chinese, Thai, Italian, etc. noodle dishes for the adults.

As I type this, Jeanne is unpacking boxes in the kitchen and I'm sitting on my Grandmother Sally's easy chair perched in the middle of the living room, surrounded by boxes.

Tomorrow - 70% chance of snow and 100% chance we'll be sick of unpacking already...

Love to all,

Jason

Sunrise over Boulder

Boulder and LA may not have a whole lot in common, but they definitely share one annoying trait - noisy hotel heating systems! We have a relatively sleepless night in our hotel here but woke in time for Logan to see his first sunrise over the Eastern Plains. (His comment was, "but where are the Rocky Mountains?") Got the kids out for a pancake breakfast at Le Peep , a great local coffee shop, then a trip through the biggest grocery store I've ever seen. And then we carted the kids and the groceries to the new house. Weather clear and sunny, low 40s. We didn't get any of the snow they'd been predicting all week...now it looks like we may get some on Wednesday.

At one point we were exploring the front of the house with the kids when we noticed deer foraging in our back yard. If you look closely at this picture you can see them just beyond the wall at the end of our property, about 30 feet away from Logan and Zach. Being a city slicker, I was terrified the deer would attack my boys, but actually the kids ran straight at them excitedly shouting "deer! deer!" and the deer ran off to a neighbor's yard. They returned once we were inside the house and we got to watch them grazing while I was organizing the kitchen.

We also retrieved our new guest bed mattress from the O'Connors' house (along with a bunch of great loaner cutlery, dishes and other stuff) and Jason set the bed up in the basement guest room. With that here we've decided to forgo another night in the hotel and move in. The movers are set to show up Tuesday so it will just be another day without furniture.

I also managed to sneak in a little nap in the sun at one point. The sunlight in our house is fantastic - we have a Southern exposure off the dining room/kitchen/family room and the sunlight streams in all day long. Some day when we have more time to think about it we may consider putting solar panels on the roof above those rooms to take full advantage.

We dragged the poor kids to one more home/bath/etc. store to get a few more things, then hung around the house for the rest of the evening. With no furniture, we did a lot of picnicking, which the kids enjoyed. And before bedtime Zach and Logan got to try out the big soaking tub in our bathroom - they can practically swim in it.

Another busy day tomorrow...and the next day...and the next...not sure when we'll get to put our feet up. But soon we hope. I'm going to sign off for now. Lots of love to all!

This was a great decision! Or was it...?

Here I sit on the couch at the Holiday Inn Express in North Boulder - we made it!

My day started at 3am when I was awoken by the incredibly loud heater at the hotel we were staying at in Los Angeles after all our stuff was carted away. After about an hour I finally fell back asleep, only to be awoken by Jeanne at 5am, tell me that she was going to get up and get a shower and she would awaken me when she was done. Once we were both up and showered, we repacked our bags a few times, and took the kids over to the O'Brien's for breakfast. Jill made pancakes for all, which the kids devoured. Jeanne went over to our old place and did some last minute throwing away and cleaning. At her suggestion, I went over and copied down the dates and height marks we had marked on a door frame as the kids grew.

After breakfast, we took the kids over to the COMPLETELY empty apartment to say goodbye. Logan walked around "goodbye kitchen, goodbye stairs" until he had been through the entire house. He saved his room for last, and after a final "goodbye room" we locked the doors and left. We said our tearful goodbyes to Jill and Liv, and jumped in the car with Matt who took us to the airport, where we bid him farewell and officially embarked on our journey.

The airport was the typical hassle of two kids, 5 checked bags, four carry-on bags, security lines, shoes off, out of the stroller, through the metal detector, shoes on, back in the stroller etc. We rushed to make it to the gate, only to find out that the flight was delayed by over an hour.

The flight was two hours, and as expected, as long as we kept the kids amused, we were fine. I used M&Ms like skinnerian reward pellets and fed him one ever few minutes, which worked wonders.

Once off the plane, we met up with our Boulder friends Ryan and Stephanie O'Connor and their daughter Caitlin (same age as Zach). Go figure, we leave the O'Briens in LA and meet up with the O'Connors in Boulder. They were simply amazing and came all the way to pick us up using my car which had been shipped out the previous week and delivered to their house. They brought their own car as well, so we could put our luggage in their car, since ours was full of stuff we packed before shipping it from LA. Talk about service - not only did they come to pick us up, they brought bottled water for us all, and even gave us a "fast pass" so we could take the express lanes through the toll booths on the way to Boulder. It was an incredible way to be greeted to town, and helped ease the overall sense of loss and displacement we are both feeling.

So we drove the 40 minutes to Boulder and arrived at our new house. Stephanie Ianonne, our AMAZING realtor met us there and officially turned over the keys to our new house. The kids spent a half hour or so running around the house exploring. Logan insisted in seeing the basement first and then explored the rest of the house.

After bidding our friends and realtor/friend goodbye we locked up the house and took the kids out for dinner. In, what I hope was a prophetic view of how great Boulder is going to be, we went into a bakery for dinner, and asked if they could make Logan a PB&J sandwich. The woman there spent about 5 minutes looking around the kitchen to try to find some Peanut Butter, when we finally told her that we really didn't want to trouble her. When I told her we were new to town, she broke into a huge smile and welcomed us enthusiastically and asked where we were moved from. The genuine warmth she showed and her willingness to try to help us get a PB&J sandwich really made us feel good, at a time when we could use something to keep our spirits up.

Because PB&J wasn't forthcoming, we popped next door to a little pasta place where we got Logan buttered pasta, and Zach Macaroni and Cheese. Both kids ate MASSIVE bowls of pasta (I guess the cold weather really does supercharge your appetite - or maybe it's because we neglected to feed them lunch), and we went to check into the hotel.

Once in the hotel, I fired up my cellular modem to get online and initiated a video conference back to the O'Briens. If you haven't tried it, Windows Live Messanger has a free video conferencing service that is amazing, and only requires an inexpensive web cam. We all chatted a bit, but the connection was a bit spotty so we bid them goodnight.

So here we are in the hotel for tonight and tomorrow night. That basically gives us two days to get our house livable, so tomorrow will involve assembling the bed we ordered, going on a MASSIVE food shopping trip, and a hundred other little things we probably haven't thought of yet, but which will occur to us tomorrow as we spend more time in the house.

We also have to pick out paint colors since the painter is coming on Monday to repaint some of the bright red and dark green rooms we don't much care for.

So the theme continues from the last few days. We're tired, we're excited, we're scared, we cried a bit saying goodbye, but we can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring.

I just hope we can find a place that serves pancakes tomorrow morning or Logan will be really sad...

Signing off from Boulder...

Jason

That's a big truck

At 8am, a 70 foot big rig pulled up outside Park La Brea, and executed a complicated maneuver to back to within 20 feet of our front door, without running over a single curb, lamppost, or little old lady.

Due to some logistical problems, instead of four big burly guys to move us, we got a single burly guy and his wife, and a few hours later another burly guy. From 8am until 7pm they were labeling, loading, and packing our stuff, until finally our apartment stands empty, save for the legions of dust bunnies who have bred unchecked during our four years in residence.

It was an exhausting day, and I had to miss most of the going away party to help the movers get stuff out of our storage space, but it is over now.

We shed many a tear, especially saying goodbye to our nanny, Udayangani, who we love dearly and who has been with us for almost four years now, since Logan was a tiny baby. It's incredibly hard to leave, but we still feel we made the right move.

Tomorrow morning, we'll take the kids back to our neighbors/best friends' apartment, (the O'Briens - right across the courtyards from us in Park La Brea) for a pancake breakfast, and I'm sure LOTS more tears. Then it's off to the airport.

Our next post will be from Boulder.

Peace Out - Goodbye Los Angeles.

Jason

Hey, where's my stuff?

So a tornado hit 565 S. Orange Grove this morning, in the form of three very "interesting" but determined ladies and a young man who we think was the son in law of one of the women. We had woken up in a state of panic this morning, after a fitful night's sleep, and jumped up to finish packing our suitcases, get Logan off to school and do our last-minute organizing. At about 9:45 these people burst into our house with boxes, paper, and tape and started shoving our stuff into boxes at an alarming rate (they did not, as we had been warned, pack any of our garbage can contents). We can only hope that we managed to get everything we need for the next few days before they packed it, because there will be no finding anything now until it all arrives in Colorado (estimated to be Wednesday).

We had a busy and exhausting day and I honestly can't remember what it was we did - other than moving things from here to there again. But for better or worse, our entire life is packaged up into 102 cardboard boxes. The moving truck arrives at 8am tomorrow to get it all.

In the midst of all of the chaos, we got a call from our realtor to tell us that our escrow closed as planned and that we are officially homeowners. It is kind of strange to know we own property and a house but we aren't there to see it yet. But not long now.

We spent a bittersweet evening with our friends the O'Briens (who generously opened their house to our kids and Udayangani all day today, fed us all lunch and then cooked us dinner). There were a fair number of tears shed, especially when Jill showed us the movie she'd cut together out of home videos of Liv and Logan and Zach.

Tonight and tomorrow night we are staying in the Wilshire Crest Inn on Crescent Heights and Orange street. We've been driving by it for years and I've always wondered what it's like. Now we know and we would recommend it to anyone who wants a nice, comfortable although not ultra-luxurious stay in this area.

Three days and counting...but at least Logan's going with us

Things are getting down to the wire, and as always there are many things on my to-do list that I'm wondering why they couldn't have been taken care of in previous weeks. But isn't that always the way? Anyway after a few heart-attack moments with our bank and with some typos on the loan documents, we have successfully signed our lives away to the mortgage company and wired the title company what feels like our life savings. So, whether we're ready or not, it looks like were about to officially own the house on Hawthorn Avenue.

Yesterday Logan and I spent a lovely day at the California Science Center with our friends Melissa and Teagan, learning about macrophages and Star Wars. There was some anxiety in the middle there when I got a call from Jason that my plan for getting money from the bank to the title company wasn't going to fly, but Melissa lent me her car and took Logan to an IMAX movie on space while I raced home to get account numbers and straighten everything out. All was well and Logan got an ice cream in the bargain. Saying goodbye was tough, especially on the kids.

In the afternoon, a visit from Sandya, who is a good friend of Udayangani, has substituted as our nanny in the past and now cares for the daughter of a friend. And then a family dinner of leftovers as we try to clean out the cupboards and refrigerator. Luckily, Logan spontaneously declared "Oh, OK, I'll go to Boulder with you!" during dinner. So hopefully that means we won't have to drag him kicking and screaming onto the airplane. Only time will tell.

OK, gotta get back to packing. And cleaning. And organizing. Argh!!!

More goodbyes...and Logan begins expressing some reservations

Busy day today, rushing around doing last-minute errands, reviewing the home purchase settlement statement etc. We attended a very nice farewell party at Jason's office - Logan skipped straight past the pizza to the ice cream, and told everyone about how our new house has "FOUR Bathrooms!!!"

At home we had a very nice playdate with Logan's best school friend Penelope and her mom Amy. And then our neighbor Liv came over in the afternoon while her mom and dad got out to celebrate their anniversary. Over the past few days Logan and Liv have been declaring that they want to be brother and sister, despite the fact that we've told them that would put a dent in their wedding plans. But today the motivation came out...Logan informed us that he was not moving to Colorado but that he was going to live at Liv's house with her. I told him we'd miss him too much and that he had to come with us, to which he replied (with a rather desperate edge) that we could visit him but that he wanted to stay in Park la Brea with Liv. He even later told Matt and Jill about his plans, and told them that he wasn't going to talk to us about it any more.

At first it was kind of cute to hear them say these things, but the underlying emotions of sadness and helplessness are pretty clear to us and it's heartbreaking. Of course we knew it was too much to hope for that Logan would remain cheery and excited about this big change in his life. I guess we can take comfort in this development, since it means he's getting a chance to experience the full range of emotions that go with a move and appreciate the people and things he will miss before they're all gone.

Of course children are resilient, and by this evening he, Liv and Jason were making Yum-Yum bars to give out at our final MyGym session Wednesday.

My car! They took my car!

As part of our plan to have as seamless a move as possible, we are shipping my car ahead to Boulder so it will be there when we arrive. In fact, our friends Ryan and Stephanie (Los Angelinos now living in Boulder) are going to pick us up from the Denver airport in our own car!

So this morning a 90-foot tractor trailer with a "Hard Core Jesus Freak" sticker on the cab pulled up in front of our place to pick up my car. It was quite a sight to see and the kids were FASCINATED as this giant big rig (or in 20-month-old Zach-speak "Bee Weeg") loaded up my car for the journey to Colorado. The driver and his partner/wife were even nice enough to give the kids a tour of the driver's cabin, which in this particular truck included a shower, full size bed and kitchen and wood paneling.

Later in the day, we picked up a rental truck so we could retrieve the queen sized bed frame we loaned some friends a few years ago. Of course, once we got it back to our place we realized we had nowhere to put it, so we spent the better part of the afternoon moving piles of boxes from HERE to THERE so that we could put THAT over HERE and THIS PILE could go over THERE and if we put THAT on top of THOSE things then we might be able to get THAT stuff to fit behind THOSE etc. Gosh I hate moving.

Finally about 4pm I had to go visit with and say goodbye to our good friend Amanda Muller nee McPherson. She had twins about 6 months ago and it was heartbreaking to say goodbye.

The days are positively flying by now and it seems like everything I do is a "last". The last time I go to a certain restaurant. The last time I see a friend. The last Sunday night in Los Angeles etc. I keep reminding myself all the "firsts" we have to look forward to, but it's still tough to go through an extended week-long goodbye.

I hope our Los Angeles friends realize we are serious when we say we have a guest room ready at any time...

OK, so blogging is hard to keep up with when you're moving...

Maybe this wasn't the best thing to add to our list of to-dos so close to move day. But we'll try to keep up to date as much as possible. Anyway, a lot has happened since my last post.

On Friday evening I went out with my MOMS Club friends for a last moms' night out hurrah at the Sonora Cafe. We always have such a great time, with the conversation flowing freely from "mom" topics - children's bowel movements, temper tantrums, eating habits etc. - to "grownup issue" topics - why we love our husbands, why they annoy the hell out of us, what exactly constitutes a normal marital sex life, why the Beverly Center represents all that is wrong with Los Angeles, etc. - to "higher," more existential topics questioning whether we're doing the right thing, whether we're wasting our educations, our talents and our brain cells by staying home to raise our children. The answers are different for everyone, but it's so amazing to be able to talk so freely about our hopes, fears and aspirations together without fear of judgement, and to be able to give and receive support and advice with total trust. I'm not sure I'll be able to replicate this again when we move, because I suspect it grew organically from our shared experience as women who became moms together. I am going to miss my mom friends terribly.

But, when you're a week away from moving there's not much time to dwell on any one loss - so onward we march! On Saturday morning we hosted a very enjoyable birthday party for Logan, at the Under the Sea indoor playground. Most years we do a small gig in the back yard, but this year, since we're leaving we decided to blow it out, hold the party at a venue where they take care of all of the details and invite everyone. We ended up with 33 children (schoolmates, neighborhood friends and moms club friends) plus adults and it was an absolute blast. Best of all, I didn't have to lift a finger! It was very emotional at the end, though, when I had to say goodbye to several friends who I know I won't see again before we leave.

Saturday evening we our last backyard dinner with our neighbors Julie, Calvin and Thea, and Matt, Jill and Liv. The weather was balmy, just like summertime, and we had a wonderful time sitting around talking about the past and about things to come. Again, we have the feeling we're giving up something precious that we will never be able to reproduce. We will always treasure our memories of our time at Park la Brea.

Nine days and counting

9 days to go...and look what was in my e-mail inbox this morning:

DenverPost.com *BREAKING NEWS*
Winter weather in the high country has forced the Colorado Department of Transportation to close several major roads.

I-70 is closed in both directions at Vail Pass.
US 6 is closed over Loveland Pass
US 40 closed over Berthoud Pass (local traffic is being allowed through Empire to the Henderson Mine)

Conditions are extremely windy, with blowing snow, poor visibility and hazardous road conditions, according to Stacey Stegman, CDOT spokesperson.

Great...and the weather forecast calls for snow on the day we fly out (the 24th.) I sure hope the weather calms down by the time our truck full of furniture is headed up through the mountains on I-70!

So we're getting down to the wire here...while tedious, the arrangements and the sorting through our possessions is really the easy part. But over the last week or two we've doing more and more "lasts" - Logan's last haircut with Lisa, our last trip to the Car Museum, etc. - and we've been saying goodbye to the people that we likely won't see again - doctors, hairdressers, grocery store clerks, etc. People who were an important part of our lives but, realistically, only for so long as we lived here in LA. It's been pretty tough to acknowledge that we're letting go of those connections that none of us thinks about on an everyday basis, but that keep us grounded in our community.

This week we start saying goodbye to our closer friends and eventually family, and I don't even want to think about how tough that's going to be. I'm getting teary just thinking about it.