We Made It!

Hard to believe we've been in town a couple days already! We started our house hunting project today. Will post a recap of that tomorrow or Saturday, once we've had day two of looking at things.

But first, some pictures from our last day of driving and arriving in Boulder!

One of the sights we knew would be on our drive was a huge easel with a giant Van Gogh painting on it. Kansas is the sunflower state, so of course it's a painting of sunflowers. The easel is conveniently located next to Bill's Shootin' Shop and Bubba's Meat Block... So first thing on Tuesday we took our portrait by the easel.

And then continued our drive. It was pretty exciting to finally enter Colorful Colorado. OK I know I'd told people KS wasn't so bad, but man western KS is hard to get through! Probably aided by anticipation about getting into CO. Sorry KS people, but dude.. (I will say that eastern CO isn't much better :P )

All of a sudden, at mile marker 371, we were able to clearly see the mountains! These pictures are from a little later, since the faraway mountains weren't too photogenic.

It has yet to sink in that we actually live in this place; it's gorgeous and SO different than Miami. It kind-of feels like a big vacation. Aided, surely, by staying in a hotel suite. I suppose at some point we will get used to it, but we were saying today that it might not feel real until we move into someplace and have all our 'stuff' back. And so the house-hunting adventure continues!

Kansas

Greetings from Kansas!
We've made it to the Mountain time zone, at 3,700 feet. Observations from today: Kansas is not nearly as flat as people would have you believe, a field full of dead sunflowers is one of the saddest things I've ever seen, and giant objects are totally worthy roadside attractions. Chris points out that we saw dust devils twirling through fields and were in Topeka for the tornado siren tests, which was quite eery as 6 or 7 sirens echoed off the hills.

It's picture time!
While driving through IL we heard about a statue of a giant shuttlecock in Kansas City, which is where we stayed last night. So of course we had to go see it!


Entering Kansas..

Partway through our drive we came up on some windmills, which we had some fun with.

Tomorrow we complete our trip! We have been enjoying the time on the road. A much needed vacation, it's been great to spend time together with little to do but chat and watch the scenery, and we've had a lot of fun hanging out with friends at each stop. We're ready to start the next part of the adventure though, so it will be good to get in to CO and see what happens next!

ILL

After a couple months of marveling at how neither of us have gotten sick despite of how crazy-busy we have been, my body finally gave in and I've got a cold. :( I thought it was just a sore throat from all the dust kicked up by packing our belongings, but alas it seems to actually be a cold.

Thankfully we didn't drive yesterday. We spent the day in IL, visiting friends at the U. of Illinois. It was a good day. Chris went for a bike ride/walk (the bike tire popped - sad!) and I went to a tailor, only to find out my next bridesmaid dress didn't need alterations at all. I think that's the first time EVER that I have not needed alterations! Yay. We were also joined at dinner by a friend from summer camp whom I had not seen since 1998 - it was great to see her. Old friends that show up and are still awesome are so.. reassuring. Exciting. Refreshing. Fun :)

Today we continue on our trip. We'll be crossing Missouri and getting into Kansas. Hoping this is more interesting than people have warned us it won't be. Sick + boring driving = inevitable drowsiness..

Here we go!

We’ve come a long way since my last post! This will be a picture dump post, so get ready.

First, the promised picture of my plant, waiting to leave. This is a well-traveled plant. He was given to me by a student staff member before she left the University of Illinois, and lived in my office there in a small pot for a year. Then I drove him down to FL with me, and eventually transferred him to a large pot where he lived quite happily in our kitchen. That large pot was taken by a friend when we left, and now this little cutting is traveling across country again to a new home in CO. Here’s hoping he survives the adventure!


We’ve decided to use this little toy car to help show our travels as we go. So here it is in North Florida.


We’ll try to catch a picture as we pass into each state. Though we missed the initial welcome sign going into Georgia, Chris did get a picture of the rain!


We stayed the night Wednesday in GA with Grandma. Was good to see her and catch up a bit. She made us her famous full southern breakfast – eggs, grits, bacon, sausage, and from scratch no-recipe biscuits (seriously amazing..). We didn’t need to eat for 8 hours after that! Here is Grandma being shy about having her picture taken :)


Yesterday we said goodbye to Grandma and headed to TN to visit our friends Mark and Heidi. As you go from GA to TN, you pass back and forth between the states a couple times which is entertaining.




We stopped at the rest area just inside TN, which was gorgeous! And, Chris found some Cheerwine, which he was very excited about.



Today we depart our friends in TN and head to IL. Up, up and away!

Movers

I ran some errands yesterday and (almost literally) ran into a car full of my students at the Target in Hialeah. They helped me find lumbar pillows to use for the drive. Good times!

Having movers come pack the house has not been quite the magical experience I was promised. They sent only two poor guys to pack our whole house, and it took them eleven hours. They only took one 5-minute break the entire day.. Didn't even stop to eat.

Anyway, we're almost out. They're taking out the beds now. We're hoping to get on the road within an hour. I have a picture of my little plant, waiting by the window. But this internet is not fast enough to transfer it now. Later :)

Ding!

Like a well timed meal, there is little that is more satisfying to me than a series of things coming to completion at the same time. Ding! Everything is in order, all the food hits the table perfectly done and piping hot.

Similarly with a move. I get a little thrill with each box of kleenex finished in the last couple days, each jar of jam, every task completed at just the right time so there isn't a crunch. This move, getting a job offer the day before my last day at MDC exemplified this.

I am willing to put a lot of effort into making these little successes. Last weekend we had a "potluck/take stuff from our pantry" party in an effort to make sure we didn't waste too much food before the move. I planned an entire main dish of chicken just to use up a packet of soup mix. But boy was I pleased to have found a good (and truly delicious!) way to use up that little packet.

I've also been having fun using up some of our more expensive baking ingredients. With all the gluten-free cooking we do, some of the flours are expensive/hard to find so the thought of them mouldering in storage going bad is hard to handle. So this week I baked these little delights:

Gluten-Free Cherry Sour Cream Muffins. Making these muffins used up the last of our sour cream, frozen cherries, sugar, Egg Beaters, muffin cups and *almost* the last of the butter. Plus we were almost out of breakfast cereal so this prevented us from having to purchase more. Ding!

Today is our last big purging/organizing push before the movers come tomorrow. We have a TON of stuff to get through, but I'm hoping that at the end of the day everything will be ready and we'll be able to keep going with minimal stress!