Counting the days.....

I am back from the dead and in the land of the bloggers once again! We've had a very eventful last month or so. Here are the highlights!

• David bought and learned how to play the banjo for Boulder on Broadway's summer production of the musical "Floyd Collins." A unique musical about a miner in the early 1900's in Kentucky. And great for David to get his first taste of life in the theatre. (In fact, after the 3rd show, David expressed his admiration for us crazy theatre actors and the energy it takes to do even a short run of a show.)
• David and I drove from Denver to Durham in 2 (yes that says 2) days for our house closing! Along the way, we got to see David's brother and sister-in-law and our a-DOR-able niece and nephew for a few hours break from "church butt" (the term used to describe the feeling in the rear after sitting for entirely too long.) We also got to see my extended family in Kentucky and have a wonderful lunch there! 2 days of driving + 13 family members seen = awesome for our spirits, not great for our butts. We were thankful to get to Durham and crash with an old friend of David's from high school and his wife and sister for the night.
• We bought the house!! That's right, folks, she's all ours! (Well, not ALL, but you get the idea.) We bought a house and sold 5 cds before 10am. Good start to the day, right? (If you want to buy a copy of said cd, you can do so HERE and see what all the fuss is about. :) ) We drove over and checked her out for a while and could not be more excited. Durham gave us a beautiful day while we were in town, too. All in all we had a great day--explored the area a bit, had lunch at this Indian restaurant right up the street (we were pleasantly surprised at the good food and great price for the lunch buffet), went to Lowes and decided on updating small things around the house (door knobs, light switch covers, outlet covers) to give everything a nice, new, crisp look. We decided to go with a dark bronze finish---we love chocolately browns anyways, and we are hoping to keep the paint in all the rooms nice and light to make the place feel bigger. We are hoping that the contrast with the dark covers and light walls will make for a dramatic and finished effect. We took our furniture measurements with us and taped off where we think we'll place the furniture in each room. I am SO glad we did, because a few things did not fit the way I was hoping they would when I drew out my floor plans. (Yes. I drew out floor plans for every room months ago. When you are daydreaming of a house and not in it yet, what else do you do?) We finished off the day with a bottle of champagne, classily drank from plastic cups, in our gazebo out back. (Side note--the gazebo is bigger than we remember it being! This means we can fit a circular table in there for eating, drinking, reading, etc. I am quite partial to this table on sale!!! Screening in the gazebo just got a LOT higher on my priority list. Awesome.) While out back, we realized we have a few trees that are just begging for a two person hammock between them. I'm digging something like this or this from World Market. We also got to meet one set of next door neighbors and their dogs! They were all quite nice and we look forward to getting to know them better.
• The following day, we did the normal thing for any young couple to do after buying their first house: we took an international vacation for 6 days. (We do know we are crazy, thanks.) We flew down to "the motherland" of Colombia to meet and hang out with a bunch of extended family down there (bringing our total family-members-seen-this-trip total to 34.) It was a great great time--I promise to write more on that in a later post.

When all was said and done, we were gone for 10 days that looked like this:

Day 1: Drive 14 hours

Day 2: Drive 14 hours

Day 3: buy a house

Day 4: fly to Colombia (travel from 7am-8pm ish)

Day 5: see the Catedral de Sal, hang out with mi abuelo, and meet a TON of great family

Day 6: spend the day sight-seeing with the aforementioned family in Bogota

Day 7: Fly to Cartagena (on our second attempt....we missed the flight we were supposed to be on. Oops.) Spend the rest of the day on the beach.

Day 8: More beach and a bus tour in Cartagena

Day 9: Fly back to Bogota and meet more family (on the other side of the family this time! How fun to meet so many great people!)

Day 10: Tearfully leave Bogota at 8am Mountain time and get back to Denver at midnight.

Day 11:.....go back to work very sleepily

We've stayed busy! How about you? Anyone else not want to see a plane again for a long long time?

Abrazos y besitas (hugs and little kisses),

Las VanderdelaCuadraHamm's