On to Michigan

 The beginning of our travels in Michigan! Maya instantly recognized her cousins and weaved herself into the dynamic of the youngest members of the family quilt.

Here is the view from the balcony at the friends' house after Tommy and Beth's wedding extravaganza. It was exciting and satisfying to be able to spend some quality time with some of our favorite people in the world.

Here is one of the only times we had a fire--but quite an amazing night. On other evenings we watched the Northern Lights, walked to the light house, went for ice cream, and made merry. It was truly a Pure Michigan experience. 

The Beginning of the End (of Colorado for us)

 Moving Day 1: The official movers came and packed everything up into big brown paper. It was a hectic day of running around the house and watching them touch all of our most prized possessions. They were smooth operators and fairly efficiently got through the task.

They had to play TETRIS to fill the crates that were to be shipped to India. We had an Air crate that weighed 615 lbs. and two Sea crates that totaled 2000 lbs.

As we watched the truck drive away with our India essentials, we felt a huge sense of accomplishment and relief that we had jumped a huge hurdle in preparation for our departure--until we went back into the house and realized to our dismay that we had a whole lot of stuff left over. Oh well.

One more piece of the puzzle in putting our Colorado lives in suspension. Ghislain and Rachel came over and we talked IB for a few hours, had lunch and then Ghis drove my beautiful 1980 Yamaha Maxim 650 off into the sunset. I later found out that he spent the rest of the day cleaning, fixing and making the bike look brand new 33 years after it rolled off the line. 

One last Colorado adventure

Here are a few pictures from our trip to Mesa Verde before departing Colordo. It was amazing to see such beautiful creations.

View from atop the Cliff Palace

 Here is Laura with Naila. She had to brave slow walkers, steep cliffs and ladders all while carrying little Naila.





We had planned to camp a few nights for this four corners adventure--but when multiple friends with kids gave us that knowing smile and said things like "wow, how daring...", "we tried that for ONE night...", and "you guys are so adventurous..." we decided that maybe a motel wouldn't be a bad idea for this journey. It also may have helped the decision making process when Laura said--"I am NOT looking forward to sleeping in a tent with two babies". Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and enjoy the outcome.

View from inside the Cliff Palace--our guide was very informative and we even got to see some 700 year old artwork!

Our trip was perfectly timed--notice I'm not sweating!

This is Maya in one of her nice moments. She and her sister shared the back seat and were generally in good moods. This turned out to be a great trial run for our cross country adventure to try out feeding times/techniques, and to create ways of entertaining Maya as the trip got longer and longer.