House Hunting in Colorado, Day #1

I suppose this is technically day two, but since yesterday was pretty much taken up in traveling, I don't really count it as part of the real house hunting venture.

The flight yesterday was not too bad. We managed to keep Sean occupied for the first hour and a half or so, and then I finally got him to fall asleep. He slept for a while, but woke up really grumpy. I'm not sure if it was because he didn't get enough sleep, or if our descent was bothering his ears. At any rate, he cried for the last 20-30 minutes. One lady a couple of rows ahead glared back at me. I was thinking, "What do you want? Do you think I want him to cry?" It was very annoying. I finally got him to stop crying by sticking one earpiece from some headphones in his ear. He was distracted enough by the History Channel that he stopped crying (the TV was free on that flight because of antenna problems).

We arrived at the Air Force Academy at about 9:00pm, which to us felt like 11:00pm with the time difference. When we originally made reservations to stay here, we were told that we'd stay in a normal hotel-like room the first couple of nights, and then we could move to a more family-friendly room the rest of the time. There must've been a cancellation or something, though, because when we got here, we were in the family-friendly lodging. It's really nice, more like a one-room apartment than a hotel room. There is a bedroom, bathroom, and a full kitchen/living room, and even a washer/dryer. It's great, because we can put Sean down for a nap and still get work done out in the living room. We also don't have to eat out every meal. There's even a pack-n-play for Sean to sleep in and a high chair for him to eat in. It's perfect. It's also WAY cheaper than we could get a normal hotel room for.

We met our real estate agent this morning at 10:00 and started looking at some of the listings she'd sent us that we liked. I think we saw six houses today. Of the six, there were two that were possibilities, and the rest we pretty much rejected. We only went until about 1:00, because our agent had a closing or something this afternoon, but that's okay because it gave us time to go back to our room and put Sean down for a nap. The poor guy was pretty tired. He'd been up late (at least two hours past bedtime) for two nights in a row, with only a tiny nap on the plane yesterday, so it was good to give him some time to rest.

We ate lunch at a place called Ted's Smokehouse, or something like that, on our realtor's commendation. For $40, we got two bison burgers. They were great burgers, but the price was a little crazy. They also had paper straws instead of plastic straws. It was their contribution towards recyling and a cleaner planet, etc. It was like drinking through a mini paper towel roll.

We have some friends in the area that used to be in our ward in Enon, who have also moved here to teach at the Academy. We had plans to meet up with them and look at some things in their area and have dinner, but Marci's day got really crazy and so we pushed it back to Friday. But then she told us of another guy we knew from ROTC, Scott, who is also here teaching. I called him up, and he had several of his neighbors selling homes, so we went to look at those and ended up having dinner with them. His area seems really nice, and there are a lot of members there. There are two more houses there that we want to look at.

On our way back from Scott's we passed a Coldstone. Nate was tempted to stop, but kept driving. It took another block or two, but then he decided that he really wanted some ice cream, so we turned around and went back. They had a new flavor of ice cream that I kind of liked: oatmeal cookie dough. Sean liked it, too. I kept feeding him bits of it while Nate's ice cream was being finished. He screamed when we went back to the car and put him in his seat and he wasn't getting any more. He must have the ice cream gene. Nate was in a really good mood the rest of the way back to our room. He must've been looking forward to the ice cream.

Tomorrow we have a very full day of looking at houses nonstop. I think I'll turn in early. Hopefully we'll see some good ones.