Moving to Denver

The second leg of our trip was not very eventful.  We were now driving two vehicles and I had both of the kids with me.  Nathan seemed to get more into screaming the 2^nd half of the trip and would subsequently wake up Evy from her nap and make her scream.  And we had some crazy rainstorms to drive through.  But we made it all the way to Denver in about 13 hours (split up in 2 days.) We had to make it to Denver early enough on Friday to be there when the pods would be delievered.  Our moving company had warned us that it could be as early as noon.  It was a good thing we made it to Denver so early in the day. 

We stopped by the leasing office of our new apartment to finish some paperwork and get our keys.  We were both struggling with cell service while we were doing the paperwork, but once we got into our apartment we lost all service.  We couldn’t even stand by the windows and get service.  We headed out onto the balcony and still couldn’t get service.  While we were there we heard the unit above us on his balcony talking to another apartment building about sending over his security deposit for a new apartment.  Not a good sign.  There were other things wrong inside the apartment.  There were huge stains on the carpet everywhere.  I’m talking 2 feet x 1 foot.  Huge.  All over.  Nasty.  I had been assured that the whole apartment would be professional cleaned and have the carpets shampooed before we arrived.  There were several things from maintence still in our apartment.  And there were a few other things that were not done properly.  All in all, the place would not be liveable for us, especially with the problems with cell service and Brad being on call at the hospital.  I was feeling physically ill from all the things we were discovering to be wrong with the apartment.  So as gut-renching as the decision was, it really was the only thing we could do.  We decided not to move in and find a different place to live.

Brad marched into the front office (because we couldn’t call) and told them we weren’t going to move in.  They tried so see if there was anyway to make it work, but we were firm in our decision and they let us out of our lease.  They were actually surprisingly nice about it.  We did try going to see other available units to check if our service was any better, but we still had no service.  Even the leasing agent who was showing us around had to step out of the building to make calls back to the main office.  We ended up chatting with some of the maintence guys who came to look at the problems in our particular unit.  They told us there were a lot of problems with the cell service in the building and they didn't get service in a lot of the units.

So after a crazy day and finding ourselves homeless, we did the only thing we thought might cheer us up.  We went to Café Rio.  I’ve been dreaming about having Café Rio as our first meal in Colorado for months (I’m not even kidding about that,) but it just wasn’t the same.  We weren’t really in the mood to enjoy our meal.

We headed to a hotel for the night.  My mom and sister had driven to Denver to help us move in, but ended up helping us take care fo the kids while we were house hunting.  They were lifesavers.  We couldn’t have done as much if we would have been bringing Nathan with us. Especially since the poor kid was sooooooo done being in a car.  My mom and sister took Nathan to the park, kept him entertained, gave him new toys and books for his birthday, made sure he was fed, and helped him deal with all the craziness.  We couldn’t have done it without them.

Keeping Nathan entertained with forts in our hotel

Brad and I then took on our housing search.  We spent several hours our first night looking at ads, emailing, and maping out potential apartments to go check out.  It was also so nice to have our friends the Lakes and Brad’s cousin Matt here to get recommendations from.  They were amazing!

Saturday we headed out bright and early to start our hunt.  We looked all day long.  Oh what a long day.  We saw a lot of duds that day.  And by duds, I mean stinky, smelly, smoky, dirty, falling apart, peed on, and just downright unacceptable.  It also made me laugh to go look at an house that was asking for non-smoking tenants and then have the house reek of smoke!  We had seen some places that could work as well.  But when we saw our house that afternoon it was such a nice difference.  It was clean, spacious, and in good working condition.  The landlord was there weeding the yard and taking care of a few other things around the house.  And it just had a good feel to it.  We put in an application that afternoon. 

The landlord warned us it could take up to 48 hours to hear back from her since she did a background check and was going to call our references.  So we continued on our search.  We saw another apartment we liked.  It had a nice floor plan and we liked the neighborhood.  The only drawback was it was a 2 bedroom.  And the apartment would need a special cleaning treatment to get rid of odors so we couldn’t move in until Thursday (meaning more days of being in a hotel.)  But we needed a place to live.  So we put in an application there as well.  But we were both hoping that we would get the house.  We knew we were up against other applicants and had been told that the Aurora renter’s market is super competitive so we needed a back up.

Early on Saturday, I had tipped off our old landlord that we were house hunting and that he might be getting calls.  Billy really came through for us.  In our new landlord’s words, Billy gave us “glowing praise.” Our landlords' were so impressed that they offered to let us rent their house!

We came over again for another walk through of the house.  We were able to meet our landlords husband and talk about the house.  The new landlords seem great.  They want the house to be kept up so anything we want to do to the improve the property (as long as they approve it first) they will pay for.  They were very nice when we told them our concerns about Nathan around the basement window wells and put in new covers so that Nathan can’t fall in.  They also put in new carpet right before we moved.  The carpet did make it so we were in hotels a few days longer, but now we are loving having the new carpet.  Aww, carpet.  It’s been a long, long time since we’ve had carpet.  And a garbage disposal.  And air conditioning.  And a garage.  And doors that actually shut.  It’s AMAZING. 

So now that we’re here and have a roof over our heads, we really like Aurora.  We live in a nice area of town, there are several Mormon families in our subdivision, we have all the stores and restaurants (including Café Rio!) that we could want, a temple relatively close, and the weather has been great.  And I should also pay homage to the city planners who put in 3 lane roads everywhere.  It’s such a difference from Philly’s crazy roads.  The “ghetto” parts of town that Brad served his mission in are not that ghetto compared to Philly.  Aurora really is a nice town.  I can’t wait to get to explore our new home more.