Our oldest daughter, Holly is in California with her husband, Erich and two grandchildren, Zoe and Ezra. She has been living in California for over 10 years now. Sara, our youngest daughter, chose to move to Colorado "on a whim" since she was looking for a change from back East. It was actually Mark who said, "Why not try the Denver area? You love the mountains"! That was almost 4 years ago and today, she and her new husband, Zach, are living just north of Denver.
So, a couple of years ago, we set out on a quest to find a reasonably priced and fairly comparable home that we had been accustomed to that would be suitable for retirement. Or, at the very least, just find the area we would be happy to spend the rest of our lives at. Having lived in California twice over the years, we knew we loved the state and with our grandchildren out there, we started looking in earnest at houses.
No, nothing came close to what we were looking for and for what we were willing to pay. Oh, we did find a couple of homes about 5 hours away from them and close to my brother, Tom and his family, but those offers didn't pan out. Call it karma or whatever, we figured that a move to California was not in our cards.
That's when we shifted focus to the Colorado housing market. After a couple of visits with Sara and Zach, we were hooked on the beauty of the mountains and the wide open spaces.
So, about two years prior to moving, we started de-cluttering and getting rid of clothes that hadn't been put on this body in years! We made the decision to try the housing market and put our house up for sale the same time we took a trip to Colorado to visit Sara and Zach. This was in February and to our surprise, our house sold immediately; thus we were off on a whirlwind tour of homes in Colorado. In April, we had a door-to-door move and here we are today.
Our move was a difficult decision because although we wanted to be closer to family, we were actually moving away from family, too, specifically my mother, sister, and one of my brothers and their families. We looked at all the factors and determined what was best for us as well as where we wanted to be at in our lives in the future.
Now that you see what brought us to the Rocky Mountain region, I thought I'd talk a bit about daughters and grandchildren, THE best things to ever happen to us! I cannot imagine life without them, they are my heart and soul. We really are blessed to have awesome daughters with fantastic husbands and a granddaughter and grandson so full of personality and love that smiles immediately come to our faces just thinking of them! And, in just 5 short months, we will welcome another granddaughter into this world, Sara and Zach's first child!
To get to this point in our lives, there were many challenges: military moves, deployments, finding the best child care arrangements, sports injuries, teenage moods and hormones, worries at every stage of their lives and at every new event like teaching our girls to drive a car and then giving them the keys. Yikes!
These memories are so vivid yet occurred a long time ago. When you are living the experiences and watching your children grow up, you don't often hear a parent say that they wished time would "slow down". No, too often we rush through our lives, dropping kids off at school, or practice, working late, running to the grocery store, doing errands, trying to get dinner on the table, and doing a million other things that we let time slip away without really pausing to appreciate the time we have with our family. Enjoy your children each and every moment...they grow up and move away all too soon.
We are thrilled to have shortened the distances to our daughters and their families. We hope our East coast family can join us as they can, whether it be for a short vacation or a permanent move someday.
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