(this is chapter three, for newbies...seek for chapter one first)
The day after the interview, we set up a day with a Colorado Realtor, Matt. Our fab friends the Cox family watched our kids for the day as Scott and I went in about 7 houses. It was a quick pace, which was becoming the norm for everything about this move. During our interview visit, we wanted to get an idea of areas that would be a fit for our family.
Our criteria for a home included: keep it in the budget, a ranch style home, family friendly neighborhood, newer than our Cali home, basement for the kids to kick it in, AND close to schools and shopping. Actually, each of these were on my list, Scott's list was more like, "I want to be able to ride my bike into work and keep it within 30 miles of work." Now that doesn't sound like a lot of things to meet, and during that first look, we found a few homes we really liked. There was a neighborhood that stood out a little more than the rest. We didn't know it yet, but the Lord was working on us. (thank goodness).
We retrieved our kids from the Cox party house and on Sunday we visited the ward that belonged to that neighborhood we liked. The ward blew us away. It was big...like 150 kids in Primary. There were several friendly people and it was a congregation that has a mix of kids between teenagers to babies. After recovering from the initial shock of the sheer numbers, I liked it.
We flew back to LAX and had some good laughs about the contrast between LAX and the Denver airport. It's like going from the masses to "many". It felt like it would be an easy transition going to Denver in the "commute" department at least.
Scott and I started to do the math: finding a home, getting our home sold, school starts within a week, and oh yeah, our callings that we liked. I had just been called the month before as Relief Society President (In our church, this is working with women: humanitarian efforts, Sunday lessons, building spiritual strength, and remaining sane as we balance it all). I really was enjoying serving as Relief Society President, I was learning a lot and we were cruising. There were so many things that we were working on and it was fun. I had to tell our Bishop that we had to keep things on the down low, but that we would be moving and it looks like I was to serve as President for a record breaking, brief 2 months. But, if the Lord calls your family to another area, you follow His lead.
I was a little overwhelmed, and we contacted our realtor who has the biggest heart, Lea Stevens. Lea was our go-to realtor and a part of our family. We asked her to help us with each of our moves, this would be our 3rd time working together and we knew we were in good hands. After listing our home, we had to decide how we would manage the move. Would Scott commute from CO till our house sold? Do I stay with the kids till after the first semester of school (and I could get some extra bond time with all my gal pals)? What if the house isn't in escrow before we have to move? What if we don't find a house in Colorado? Once again, we turned to the Lord in prayer. We felt we were to come as we are, a family. We were all to move together and felt that Labor Day weekend would be the big commute day. Even when that was only weeks away.
