Time Of Our Lives: July 2009

Monday, July 27, 2009

1st move

We have officially moved out of the condo. We are now living with Brad's parents, Steve and Gail, for the next 3 weeks unless we can close early. The condo isn't completely empty but about 90-95% done. So for the next 3 days I'll be visiting Greeley to pack the kitchen, master bath and the other delicate stuff that we have to move. Brad will have to come and spackle the holes and then go back and paint them. That's our deal as of now any way.
Thank you to our parents and our friend Jay for helping us move all of our BIG furniture!

Friday, July 17, 2009

Our New House!!!!

Brad and I put an offer on a home in Windsor and it got accepted so now we are under contract!! It is a beautiful 3 bedroom, 2 bath home with a lovely kitchen, dining and living area. It also has a 3 car garage for our morotcycles!!! As of right now we are supposed to close on August 14th but we're hoping to move that up since we have to be out of the condo by July 31st.

We had our inspection today and it went pretty well. Our inspector, Jon from I.D. Inspectors, was great. He really took the time to talk us through everything which is nice since we're 1st time homeowners. The most significant thing he found was a small gas leak on the water heater.

Anyway, the inspection went well and we're moving forward with the purchase of our home!!

Monday, July 6, 2009

LIfe back in Colorado

So we've been back in Colorado for almost 4 weeks and it has been busy. We will officially be landlords as of August 1st. So, that means Brad and I have been house hunting and packing the house up so we can be out of the condo by July 31st while both working. Brad started his new job on June 22nd and I am working 6 hours a week in Eaton for the summer.

We have looked at a lot of different houses in Eaton, Severance and Windsor. We haven't written an offer yet but we are pretty sure we are ready to write on a home in Windsor. We are very excited to be starting yet another chapter of our lives together.

Final 3 nights in Thailand

For the last 3 nights in Thailand we stayed in Phuket at Indigo Pearl. When we pulled up it was wierd because there were guards that walked around the taxi with the mirrors that look under the car, like we were on a military base or something. Then we were taken to our room by golf cart while a 2nd cart was needed just for our luggage. The building the room was in wasn't all that impressive, I was beginning to wonder about where we were staying.

But once we walked inside, we knew we were at a beautiful hotel.

We had a private salt water pool and they even set it up for our honeymoon.

While we were on Nai Yang beach we ate dinner on the beach,

got 3 massages (1 was 2 hours), and went scuba diving.

While we were scuba diving Brad pointed out an octopus to me and I saw an eel swimming between 2 areas of coral so I got to watch him for longer than I've ever seen an eel out in the open. For our last meal in Thailand we ate at one of the hotel's restaurants, The Rivit. It had such a cool atmosphere. We were the only 2 people in the whole restaurant so the service was phenomenal. They filled our water constantly, used white gloves when they came to reset our utensils or switch out for different knives.

Nai Yang was nice and quiet and we could walk everywhere. There weren't any stores, but after all the shopping in Chiang Mai that is probably a good thing. This was a beautiful way to end our honeymoon.

From the time we left our last hotel, Indigo Pearl, until we arrived at our front door, travel time was 40 hours and 14 minutes. 40 hours included a 9 hour layover in Tokyo and a 6 hour lay over in L.A. Needless to say, Brad and I were spent and it was straight to sleep for us.

A wonderful honeymoon to start our lives together.

Wednesday in Chiang Mai

Tuesday night when Joe dropped us off he said again that we could wait to pay him until he dropped us off at the airport on Thursday. He was so trusting, so different than here in the States.

Wednesday morning Joe picked us up again and off we went to the factories in the area. We stopped at a silk factory, jade factory, teak factory, silver factory, and jewelry factory. The silk factory was the most informative. First they silk worms are in a tray where they eat as much as possible,

then they make they're cacoons,

and then the cacoons are boiled to get the fibers off the cacoons. While the cacoons are being boiled the fibers are wound together into silk thread

then they use looms to make the fabric. The teak factory was the most dangerous for us, we ended up buying a bar that should be here in late July.

We visited multiple temples. They were very neat to see but Brad and I both felt awkward because we don't understand the Budhist religion and didn't know what the rules were.

We enjoyed our day but were ready for dinner on our way back into town, again we went with Joe's suggestion and it was wonderful. We headed back to the night market after dinner and a massage and finished up our shopping. For the little amount of shopping we did in all our other stops, we sure made up for that in Chiang Mai. We decided to take a tuk tuk back to the hotel because we just had too much to carry back by hand.

Thursday morning it was time to head to the airport with Joe. We got to the airport and headed back to Phuket with 4 suitcases when we arrived with only 2, plus we had shipped 2 boxes home. Like I said, we did a lot of shopping.

Continuation of Chiang Mai

First of all, sorry it's been so long since we've posted.

When we arrived in Chiang Mai I told Brad we needed to get a taxi meter because I didn't want to end up in a mystery car like we did in Bangkok. That's how we found Joe, he spoke English and had a SUV which we needed for all of our luggage. On our way to our hotel, he asked what we had in mind for outings while in Chiang Mai. We chatted and he just seemed really nice so we decided we would have him take us to the Elephant camp Tuesday. Joe is very trusting because he said we could pay him at the end of Tuesday for both the ride from the airport and all day Tuesday. After Joe dropped us off Brad and I walked towards the night market area just to see what we were in for later that night. We had dinner at a German restaurant and then went for a massage before actually heading our for a fun evening of shopping. We shopped until after midnight and then headed back to the hotel, there was so much to see and so much to buy.

Tuesday morning came early and we were off with Joe to the elephant camp. There were maybe 2 or 3 other families at the elephant camp so we had a lot of time with the elephants without having to wait. First we got to see the 2 youngest elephants with their moms and feed them sugar cane and bananas. They were so cute! Then we went to the elephant show where the elephants showed us their parade,

sat down and said "sawadeekaa" which is hello,

played soccer, showed us how elephants help Thai people with clearing the forests, how to get their caretakers on and off of the elephants and last but not least, watched Suda paint a picture with her trunk.

We had to buy the painting, how cool is it to say you have the painting you watched her paint. After the elephant show we went for our elephant ride, we sat on the chair on the elephant's back and the trainer sat on the neck. We even had a baby following next to her mom on our trek, sooo cute!

After our trek we rode in an ox cart with an English man and his 2 sons back up to the main part of the park. The younger of the 2 sons even got to drive the ox cart for a while, I think I thought that was cuter than Brad did. After the ox carts was lunch (well really lunch was after buying a disposable camera because the battery died on our camera), a Thai buffet, very good. Brad had these colorful jelly balls with coconut milk, although he said the jelly balls had no flavor, they did look pretty. :) Then it was time for the bamboo raft ride. Brad and I were the first ones to get on our raft so we were alone except for our raft captains. It was not anything like rafting here in Colorado.