Home again home again (posted by Lani)

And none too soon. I do love it in Colorado, and Beth and I had a lot of fun, but I missed Steve, and the cats, and Pippin, and Jesse, and ... well, I was just ready to get home. Before I headed out I had another Trip From Hell; what is WITH this lately? Two trips in a row that ended with 14+ hour days due to weather delays. That's a long, long day, folks. Seriously long. Painfully long. I'm really hoping that trend comes to a screeching halt, because I Do Not Like This.

So, Colorado. Did I mention I love it? Because yeah, I do. Beth and I flew in on Friday and headed over to the Omni, which (I must brag on my leet Priceline skeelz!) I had gotten for a completely stupidly low price, lest you think I won the lottery while you weren't looking or something. Beth's online great-deal-getting skills being at least equal to mine, we were driving a cute blue Chrysler Pacifica. We stayed at the Omni for 3 nights, then switched over to the Millenium in Boulder for our last two nights (fabulous room, we liked it even better than the Omni). I kinda hadn't mentioned to poor Beth that we had to meet the realtor -- in Nederland, an hour away -- at 9:00 the next morning. ;)

We got up Saturday morning, staggered out of the hotel and over to Starbucks, and we were off. My list had I think 9 properties on it, and Nancy the Wonder Realtor had another 4 or 5 for us to look at. Honestly, I had figured we'd look around, see a lot of great stuff, and get an idea of what we'd be looking at when we really got serious. I didn't count on finding THE property -- but I did. 35 acres of pure beauty, with gorgeous views of both the foothills and the divide, natural building sites, a stream at the bottom, deer and elk wandering across the lower meadow ... and I mean, obviously this kind of incredible natural beauty alone isn't enough to make a knitter's heart go pitter patter, so let's toss in a really fabulously nice neighbor who breeds alpaca for sale and said (I kid you not, CROSS MY HEART) "Nah, we just throw away the fleece. (I almost fainted on the spot.) Oh, you knit? Your friend spins? Oh, well, you could just have all you wanted, we'd be glad to see you take it."). Seriously.

From there on, it was a rollercoaster ride. I called Steve. We talked. The property was at the tippy-tip-top of our price range, but ... it was so wonderful. So perfect. Everything we'd hoped for (plus alpaca!). So, we made an offer on Sunday -- at full price. On Monday we got the news; not one but TWO other offers, one of those also at full price. The sellers were going to counter the two of us. I started calling builders, and on Tuesday morning took one out to the site with me to go over details and make sure I wasn't missing everything; I wasn't, it was still the perfect site, and so we responded to the counter on Tuesday afternoon (the other people, we were told, had responded Tuesday morning). By Tuesday night we knew we had won, and the sellers would be signing the contract on Wednesday morning. HURRAY!

Well, unfortunately. You remember those words, right? Life had other things in store for us. At 10:30 Tuesday night someone else, an entirely new party, made an offer. Not just any offer, either; a cash offer at $20k over the asking price. No way we could compete with that, our counter had already taken us over budget. Stick a fork in us; we were done. The sellers (who are really very nice people) have offered us a backup contract, which of course we're taking; but it's a longshot, to say the least. So, pooh and other bad words. We're still looking, but the wind has been knocked out of our sails for now. I tell you, both the realtor and I almost cried. I keep telling myself that things happen for a reason, and I do believe that, but sometimes it's just hard to accept.

On a more cheerful note, Beth and I got quite a bit of shopping and sightseeing in between episodes of pretending we were mountain goats and climbing up 45 degree angles to building lots on the top of the world. We went up to The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park (The Shining was filmed there), wandered around Estes Park a bit, drove through the mountains and ooohed and aahed. We visited a couple of neat yarn shops; we had planned to visit several more, but Posh and The Recycled Lamb were so fabulous, and we had bought so much fiber by the time we left those two, that we called it quits then and there. Do stop by either or both if you're ever in the Denver area. We also shopped for clothes, and shoes, and handbags, and jewelry, and goodies for my Knitters Tea Swap 3 pal -- let's just say we shopped, and leave it at that. Well, except to say that we actually had to ship stuff home, because there were these slight issues about suitcases actually closing. Not that either of us went buckwild crazy or anything, of course *cough*

And finally, on Wednesday it was over. Back to the airport, onto a plane, and then onto another plane, and we're both home now. I'll be going back out again at the end of June, or whenever Nancy finds more properties for us to look at -- and hopefully Beth can come with again. I'm pretty sure there's still some booze left in Boulder, and we need to take care of that!