Monday July 5th was a very long day.  We left early and drove 13 hours across the country, first through all of Missouri, and then through Kansas.  And what can I say about Kansas?  It was never-ending, and not only was it never-ending, but 5 hours of our drive through it were in a torrential downpour. 

The rain began just as I started driving and Kevin fell asleep.  Not only were my knuckles white from gripping the wheel, but my fingers were cramped and sore.  Kevin woke up and saw the storm and saw me in the sorry state I was in, and had me pull over so he could take over.  He was definitely my hero.

Even after the storm, Kansas still seemed to go on forever.  At one point, we passed miles of windmills.  It was eerie and strange, like something out of a movie.

Finally, we crossed into Colorado, and when we made it to Colorado Springs, we were greeted by towering mountains and beautiful fields.  I even saw an antelope.  It was as if it was welcoming us home :).

We stayed with some old friends from Twin Falls, and had a great time catching up with Emiliean and Brian.  Once again, we felt extremely blessed to get to stay with friends and have a home-cooked meal waiting for us.   Lily and Derek were especially excited to play with their kids.  Lily and their oldest son Brenner were the cutest, as they ran around playing spy and Army.

Tuesday morning, our amazing realtor picked us up and we headed out on our house-hunting adventure.  It was all very new to Kevin and I, as we have only ever rented before, but like I said, our realtor was awesome.  I had a checklist I would take into each house, and the two of us knew exactly what we wanted. 

As the morning wore on, we were a little discouraged, especially because any of the houses that were doable, would have taken a ton of work to make livable.  It was then that Stan suggested we go look at a different area of town, a little farther from where Kevin will be working.  As we rode out to the new area, we enjoyed the view while the kids finally crashed and took a much needed nap.

As we got closer to the house, Stan told us all the great things about the community that it was in – a golf course, a pool and community center, great schools, and only minutes from the church.  It sounded too good to be true, and then we saw our house, and we were sold :).

For the same price as most of the other houses we looked at, we found this beautiful brand new home.  It was truly an answer to prayer.  As we went inside, we knew it was our home :).  Here is most of the downstairs:

And here is the upstairs (not including the three other bedrooms).

And here is the back of our house and the unfinished basement – both are obviously going to be projects for us to complete :).

And so, by lunchtime, and after looking at about 15-20 houses, we found our home :).  We feel so blessed to have found something so great.  We spent the rest of the day on the phone arranging what we could in Colorado, since we left very early the next morning for Utah, but that is another part of our adventure.