There's no place like home...

We've moved! Saturday was the day we bribed, I mean, asked our friends to help us move from the condo into our new home. There were 13 of us, and there's no way we could have done it without each of our fabulous friends and their muscles! I'm especially grateful to my sis-in-law who took the kids outside and kept them from being trampled, and for my dear friend (who also called our condo 'home' for a few months last year) who packed some of the remaining loose items so well that I knew exactly where they were when I needed them as we unpacked. We were done in just a few hours with the big stuff, but we still had to return to the condo for some of the remnants and to make sure there weren't any buffalo-sized dust bunnies lurking in the corners for the new owner...

As expected, I was a little bit emotional about 'saying goodbye' to what had been our home for six years. I admit to being a sentimental fool, having to be the last out the door so I could have my one last long look at the place we have been doing life for more than half our marriage. Lucy was just a little bit teary as we pulled away, and I tried to be genuine in my feelings and reassure her that I was a little sad, too. She recovered pretty quickly, and then made up a song to sing to me. She sang that it's okay to be sad to say goodbye to the condo, but to be happy because we have a new house to call our home. She also told me to let her know anytime I was sad and she would sing to me again. It was so sweet, and it definitely helped!

Sunday was a fun day of unpacking and trying to locate things we needed. The kids were quite helpful, as you can see.

Mostly I feel like we were pretty organized, but I admit to spending a very frustrating half hour searching for the bag of screws so we could hang the paper towel rod in the kitchen. Ugh.

We met quite a few of our neighbors during the first two days we called this place home. On Saturday we met many of them out front as we were unloading the truck and assessing the piles in the garage. But on Sunday, the weather brought the whole neighborhood out in our backyards and on the roofs as we stood in a virtually windless place and watched a tornado forming just a few miles away! The beauty of the open landscape of Colorado allowed us to see this amazing natural phenomenon, and with our new house up on a hill, we had a bird's eye view as it tore into the landscape on the other side of town.

People saw us come out and shouted their hellos and waved to us over the fences or from their rooftops. One neighbor joked that we should have waited a week to move in, just in case the neighborhood wasn't here after the storm. It gave me goosebumps to watch, and we are so grateful to know that because it touched down in a rural area, there was no major damage and no injuries or loss of life.

We all went inside when the hail and rain came, but having a front porch allowed us to show Lucy the marble-sized hail.


An hour later, the setting sun returned and shone in stark contrast on the dark storm clouds that had passed to the east. A beautiful double rainbow, pictured here from our front porch, was the perfect way to end this first full day at our house, and a humbling reminder of God's promises to us.