Planet Stoppenhagen

Home For Christmas

Kaylie was a great Mary!

A bunch of animals!

This past week was a real barnburner. First, on Monday, our stuff gets here after two months of living out of suitcases. Then, with all of our belongings all over the house as if a tornado hit, we take off on Wednesday for a two day drive to Peoria, Illinois to spend with the family for Christmas. A nice break, especiall given the fact that we have not been back to Peoria for Christmas for a long while - four years, in fact. Then, on Christmas Day, Steph and Ethan fly back to Denver while I head back for another two day drive on the 26th.

A nice trip, though. We were able to spend the first night of our drive in Le Mars, Iowa - North of Sioux City where Steph's mom lives. Ethan was a total champ on the two days of the drive. Having Jill, Skip and Jay back there was also very nice. This also marked the first time that all of the cousins - Kaylie, Zachary, Jay, Ethan and Joshua - were all together. I gotta say that they all got on great and that just tonight Ethan declared that Kaylie, Zach, Jay and Josh were all "my kids". He misses them already.

After about for and a half total days of fun, food and drink, it was time to head back - to unpack.

Check out the GALLERY by clicking HERE to see the pictures from the weekend.

PS - It was also pretty cool to stop into the Vine in Iowa City for two dozen hot wings on my drive back. Ahhhhhh. Wings!!

Zoolights

We went to the Denver Zoo Tuesday night to see the Zoolights. Click HERE to go to our gallery to see the pictures.

More pics... House and stuff

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Finally!!! We are now connected! Broadband is here at our house even though our stuff is still not here yet. They are telling us that maybe they might be able to get it to us by Christmas. Right.

Anyway, here are some pictures from our new house sans possesions. Plus, Ethan and I went to the Aquarium last week. Check out the GALLERY to see the pictures.

New House

We are now in a new house. All of our stuff is still not here, yet, however.
Not having all of our stuff has afforded us an opportunity to do some things to the house without having to move things around. So, we were able to paint the living room and the dining room. And, to top it off, the icing on the cake... Ethan painted a wall in his room. I'll let the pics speak for themselves...

Hello, again. Remember us?

Well. well. well.

Here we are. Back in Denver for a month and change so far and things have been an absolute roller coaster.

We have always maintained throughout this whole process that we would not knowingly get caught up in the habit or tendency to overly state our melancholy about leaving the UK behind. I think that it is natural for anyone to overly state how they miss the past when forced to move on. It is hard to see the positives and and optimism of the future when unable to move on from the past that you did not want to leave behind. When we left the UK, we made a conscious decision to keep our eyes firmly fixed on those positives and optimism about what moving back to the States would have in store. I think we have done a good job of it, so far throughout all of the muck we have faced. This blog is a forum for us to vent, I guess. So, bear with us as we sort of unload a little bit.

Starting out, way back in the summertime, when we learned we were heading back to Denver, Steph's employer, Northrop Grumman was basically non-existent when it came to out-processing us and getting our move back organized. It took Steph a lot of time and frustration to finally get a hold of the movers herself to organize the packing and shipping of our stuff. That should have been a tip-off that we were getting off on the wrong foot.

Jump ahead to October 19. Movers show up and efficiently load up all of our stuff in three days. The house was empty and all of our stuff was "on its way". Why quotes? I'll get to that soon. So then the 22nd of October was fly-day. Actually, it went pretty well as far as traveling with a three year old for about 18-20 hours is concerned. The only hitch was how sick Steph was on the flight. Miserable for her.

Our first order of the day was to start looking for houses. We looked at over 100-110 houses from roughly the 24th of October to finally having our offer accepted on a house about two weeks prior to Thanksgiving. That doesn't include the time we were under contract on another house that we ended up terminating due to faults uncovered in the inspection. I can't believe the Denver market. $400K for two bedrooms one bathroom and 1000 square feet?!? Completely outrageous. Finally, we found one we like and we actually closed this morning!!! Finally, we are going to get out of our friends' hair (Laura and Dave and Lisa and Brett have been absolutely wonderful and patient with us for putting up with the intruders for this long!!!).

Back to the quotes around "on its way"... Throughout this time, we were in contact with the movers and they informed us that our entire shipment was still in London (Nov. 3) and not scheduled to ship until the 12th of November - THREE WEEKS after pulling away from our house in England, and slated to arrive here in Denver on the 10th of December! Not only that, but our air shipment of goods (about 400 lbs. worth) sat at the Denver airport for about a week and a half or so "pending an FDA inspection". Unreal. So, still living our of suitcases!

Alas, I have saved the best (or worst, really) for last. After we moved to England, I noticed a flicker in our lap-top screen. I could remedy it by moving the screen back and forth until it stopped, but clearly there was an issue that needed to be tended to. Having purchased a post-warranty service contract, I figured I would simply take it back to BEST BUY when we got back to the States. So that is just what I did. On the 3rd of November, I took the lap-top in, explained the situation and they agreed that it was likely just a cable re-seat and that they still had to send it back to the manufacturer for repair. He stated that it was likely only to take a few days rather than the forecasted two weeks. Two weeks later I went to collect the lap-top from BEST BUY and was devastated to discover that they had replaced my computer's hard drive without any reason!!!! All of our pictures from before our move to the UK and all of the pics we took while there, along with all of our music, e-mails, videos and other files were all gone. When confronted, BEST BUY stated that it is common for a hard drive to be reformatted or replaced when sent away. No one told me that two weeks earlier. I felt absolutely physically ill. All they had to do was tell me that when I took it in. Since I had not backed it all up, I would have had them do it for a fee, no problem.

So, if anyone has pictures from the past three years - either from us or your own - either ones with us or ones you think we would like, please consider putting them on a CD and sending them to us.

Oh, and PLEASE boycott BEST (WORST) BUY and support your local small computer companies.

So, how about a few positives...
1. Weather. It has been sunny and warm or at least mild everyday.
2. Friends. As mentioned earlier, Laura and Dave Hansen and Lisa and Brett Ingle were tremendous in their hospitality. All of our other friends have been great in looking after Ethan, if necessary and offering their help in other ways.
3. House. Finally after searching so hard, we feel that our house is a great reward for our stress and hunting.
4. Steph's job. Other than the drive to and from work, Steph enjoys the job and the people there.
5. Family. We were able to spend Thanksgiving in Sioux City with Steph's parents and are spending Christmas in Peoria with my parents, sisters and their families. That feels great to be able to be back closer to them.
6. My budding new career. I was able to do a little bit of catering for a social event and was able to generate interest from people about my personal chef-ing.

OK. Enough venting and boo-hooing. We have tried to make the best of our situation and have had some good times along this journey. I have posted some more pics to the GALLERY.