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!!!