Two years in Denver

Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of the day Torsten and I drove into Denver for the first time, in our newly purchased Honda Civic packed with our more fragile and valuable belongings. Neither of us had ever been to Colorado before that day.

When we got here it was just the two of us. Our car was our biggest shared asset. There was nothing tying us down. We had both kept our jobs in DC, so we could have moved anywhere. But we picked Denver sight unseen because we knew that it had what we were looking for.

When we got here we had been married for a couple of months. We didn't have a dog, or a house. We had talked about kids but we knew that we wanted to be married for at least a year, possibly a year and a half, before I got pregnant. I hadn't had my lap-band yet. Owning his own company was just a vague half-thought for Torsten.

All of that stuff... our lack of mortgage, kids, anything tying us down... that's what allowed us to move to Denver. That's what allowed us to pick a town based solely on internet research, purchase a used car, pack up our stuff, and go.

Not that it was a straightforward process. We decided we wanted to move away from DC over a year before we made it happen, and we picked Denver at least six months before we moved. Getting the details straightened out was a slow, painful process, but only because we weren't aware that we'd be able to keep our jobs and were desperately looking for new ones. That was our only concern.

Now things are different. Now we have a mortgage, a dog, a baby. We have a house and quite a bit of furniture. Torsten has a company that is very focused on the Colorado market. We have friends here. We're putting down roots. Roots that have been demonstrated to us so clearly over the past few weeks by the incredible number of amazing local friends who have called, texted, emailed, brought over food, and generally been wonderful and helpful and supportive.

It would be a lot harder to pick up and move now. Luckily, we don't want to. Denver is as perfect for us as we were hoping it would be. And we're planning to stay here for the rest of our lives. Preferably in this house, even. Because this is exactly where we want to be.

And now we're raising our very own native Coloradan: