Finally, after two entire years in transition, we have finally come home.  So has our stuff.  Teresa and I counted it up once and realized that at one point, our stuff had been scattered across the continent in no fewer than four different states and in ten different locations: Anita's Birmingham, Alabama attic (thank you Anita for storing most of our stuff for two years); my parents house in Atlanta, Georgia;  Matt and Grace's house in Atlanta (thank you for storing our mattress); my parents house in Edwards, Colorado;  our neighbors Lynn and Linda's house in Cotopaxi, Colorado; a few things on our property in Cotopaxi; two storage units in Cotopaxi; our office in Salida, Colorado; and our travel trailer in Coaldale, Colorado.  AND a very important thing we missed very much, our dog Simon was "stored" at Teresa's sister Dianne's house in Ft Myers, Florida (thanks Di)!  It sure feels nice to have everything in one place again (and great to be back with Simon).  It was, of course, not without some adventure!  Here are a few of the fun projects we encountered:

House Guests - OK... so maybe this wasn't a project, and it was fun to have friends over!  We had our first few house guests within a few days of moving in, even though the house echoed.  Our friends Dan Schaufele from Boulder came through for a night. Ed Larkin flew in from Atlanta in his Cessna for a pilots meeting which we attended:

And our good friend Gautam Bhan came thru for several days prior to his trip to India on his sabbatical.  We had a great time visiting with "G" and checking out the Colorado Sand Dunes:

Crawlspace - Before heading to Atlanta, I dropped into the crawlspace, and with Teresa's help, completed the majority of the tasks outlined by our inspector.  The crawl space isn't really a bad place to work in, but there are definitely signs that mice had tried to live down there at one point; torn up insulation, tunnels in the insulation, mouse droppings scattered about.  After stirring up some dust down there while trying to remove some old stored crap left by the former owner, I went into a coughing fit... probably more from the dust than anything else, but still... it's dangerous!  Hantavirus anyone?  I will definitely need to be more careful when poking around in the crawlspace next time!

Septic Tank - Oh boy!  A treasure hunt!  We called the former owner (via her realtor) to ask when the last time they had the septic tank pumped... apparently, never... at least not in the last 10 years.  (Yikes!)  I've never had a septic tank before, but according to neighbors, we are overdue by about 5 years.  Basically, someone has to come over and pump all the solids out every 5 years or so... bacteria can only do so much I guess.  Anyhow, the septic guy told me I should locate and uncover my tank lids to keep the cost low, so I went down to the county office and picked up my "treasure" map:

I couldn't believe it.  I struck pay dirt in just a few shovelfuls.  After about an hour of heavy manual labor, I had it completely uncovered our septic tank.  It now awaits pumping... I'm sure this will be a wonderful aromatic experience.  ;-)

Packing - What a stroke of luck.  Teresa, Anita, and I were loading everything up when a worker from the house next door claimed he was "bored" and came over to help.  I was suffering from a cold/sinus infection at the time (probably from the trip under the house), so it was a tremendous help.  We, of course, paid him well.

Moving - U-Haul sucks for long hauls.  We used a U-Haul to move our stuff from Atlanta to Birmingham 2 years ago.  Teresa drove it and said the whole rig shimmied all the way to Birmingham.  She refused to do this for the three day drive to Colorado!!  U-Haul is great for local moves that don't involve the interstates, but they are horrendous for long-hauls.  So we went with a 26' Budget rental truck.  We amazingly managed to fit all of our stuff in, and the thing didn't drive too bad.  Sure, there were a few times I had it floored and we were only going 60 mph, but what do you expect for a huge truck?  This thing felt like one of the smaller big-rigs, just without the manual 12-gear shifter (automatic transmission).  We sat eye-to-eye with the big rigs on the highway, and frankly, compared to the U-Haul, it drove like a dream.  I'd recommend Budget to anyone going on a long haul, and it wasn't any more expensive.  The stuff rode fairly well, but we did incur some damage... With the rough roads in Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma, we could hear and feel the load shifting in the back.  We didn't tie things down as well as we should have.  Teresa was afraid we'd open the door to a load of splinters and firewood!

Unloading - Thanks to wonderful friends Doug, Trish, Lynn and Linda, we started at 8 am and were finished before noon!  What a team... we fed them all pizza, but we still owe them so much more.  

Unpacking - It's like Christmas in October.  You open boxes of stuff you forgot you had and then realize that you've got four can openers.  Amazingly, only a few things got broken, a couple of glasses.  Unlike Christmas, you can't send them back.  :-(  The furniture, although a bit scratched up, did fairly well.  Some things will need some attention when Teresa can get to it.  Although we have similar square footage to our old 4 bedroom, 3 bath house in Mableton, our house here in Salida only has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and a very open floor plan.  In such a large open space, it's hard to figure out what goes where.  So as we opened box upon box and started piling stuff.  There was some complaining... Teresa and I had a few heated debates about what to keep and what to put in the next garage sale, but everything is slowly finding it's place, and all is good in T&A's Sandbox, the name we have given our new home.  (Sand is what we have plenty of!)

Refrigerator - Thank goodness for good neighbors.  Teresa had measured our refrigerator's width at the top cabinet to make sure it would fit in the allotted space, but she did not measure the width from the countertop!  The counter extended further.  Oops.  We had to "modify" the countertop to get it to fit, but fit it did.  Thanks to Trish, Doug, and Linda for their handiwork.

Work - Our little limited liability corporation, Tanda Enterprises, LLC, has just joined the Salida Chamber of Commerce, and both Teresa and I have started to do some local consulting work.  The local work is quite nice, since it gets us out of the house and broadens our base of income... not a bad thing when you live in a small town.

BB&B - T&A's free BB&B (beer, bed, and breakfast) is officially open to friends and family.  Let us know if you find yourself planning a Colorado vacation.

That's about it from T&A's Sandbox!

PS We will be in Atlanta during the week of Thanksgiving, and for our friends and family in South Florida, we'll be there the last week of November.  We look forward to seeing all of you!  Stay tuned for get-together announcements.