Rocky Mountain High. . .

In Colorado!

On Monday of last week, we found out that Dan got the position in Denver, Colorado! They want him to start there by the 17th of March, which does not give us much time at all to get everything ready before we move.

The great thing about Colorado is that it is still close enough for our friends and family in Salt Lake to visit us. It also has an international airport with direct flights to and from Germany, so visiting Dana's family is much faster and simpler, and they can visit us easier, too.

Dan already has a good friend in the Denver office named Kelly, and his boss Jim is a great guy, too. Things look like they might just be pretty sweet.

We spent Friday and Saturday in Denver, looking for houses with Greg, our fabulous realtor. He drove us all over the city in his Porsche Cayenne (Dan could hardly stop smiling every time he hit the gas). First off, we noticed that we both love Denver. The days we were there it was like Spring: sunny and warm. Saturday was 74 degrees! It is a bright, sunny, clean, and active city. Dana loves the fact that it is a 'real' city with lots of skyscrapers and an impressive skyline, as opposed to the 3 or 4 that Salt Lake has. The city has literally hundreds of miles of bike and jogging trails all over the place, and a huge lake/park just to the south of downtown.

The LDS Family Services office is in Aurora, which is east of Denver. Aurora is a suburb, but it is a huge one. It is the third largest city in Colorado by population. The eastern and southern sides of Aurora are really nice neighborhoods with good schools and nice master-planned communities with more bike trails and parks than we have ever seen. Certainly more than we have seen in Utah.

Greg showed us 17 houses over the course of two days, and honestly, we can't remember much of anything about most of them. Some of them were alright, two of them were completely trashed, and one of them was absolutely perfect. We found a house on the first day that we just loved. The price is right, the plan is great, the house is brand new, and the neighborhood is wonderful. We liked it so much that we put in an offer on it, and are now waiting to see what the seller thinks about our bid.

All in all, it was a very successful and fun trip. Dana and I both like our new city, and can imagine ourselves being happy there. We are sad about leaving our friends and family here in Salt Lake, but we will be coming back into town quite often to see everyone. We just hope we can make some good friends in Denver, too. So far, the people we have met there have been very friendly. The church is strong there (17 stakes) so we automatically will have at least a ton of Mormons to get to know!

The only downside of the trip was the drive home. A winter storm rolled in just as we were driving out. It hit us in eastern Wyoming on I-80. If any of you have ever driven in a winter storm in Wyoming you know what we are talking about. It was a blizzard. There were times when Dan could not see the nose of the car, let alone the road. What was a beautiful 7 hour drive towards Denver became an 11 hour white-knuckle ordeal on the way home. We left Denver at 6:00 pm and didn't get home until almost 5:00 am. We were just happy and grateful that nothing happened on the way, and that we got home alright. Dan created a new rule for the family: no driving on I-80 in the winter at night. Never, ever again.

So that was our trip to the Mile-High City. We are excited about this new adventure and this new chapter in our lives.