We walked through verification today on our house. Minor issues will go on our "punch list" to be fixed by the builder over the next few months. Tomorrow, we go to closing and before lunchtime, the house should be all ours!

Once we get keys, a whirlwind of activities will occur culminating in our move into the house. Movers come on Monday, 6/15, to deliver our household goods and we are taking advantage of an empty house to get the interior painted. We are getting rid of the peach colored walls, thank goodness! The painters we hired gave us some ideas for how to select colors and we went to Guiry's - an amazing paint and art supplies store - to get some further (and free) color consultation from their designers and managed to make it through the surprisingly painless process of choosing colors. I hope we did ok.

Painters begin prepping the house tomorrow afternoon and I am on the phone with all the utility companies to switch over/begin services. We meet with a landscape designer tomorrow also to get ideas for our currently bare backyard and we start moving some items from my parents' house over.

Saturday, appliances (fridge, washer, and dryer) get delivered, DIRECTV gets installed, and painters begin coloring the walls. In the middle of the day, Abby's busy social calendar tells us she has a birthday party to attend.

Sunday, the painters continue, we will clean, line shelves, hang drapes where we can, etc. to get ready before the movers come.

Monday, we direct movers traffic and begin the fairly substantial unpacking effort. Paul will get Abby's crib set up and we will spend our first night there - assuming paint fumes will no longer be an issue.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything will go smoothly over the next few days.

Shortly after moving here, we realized we missed "Crepes A-Go-Go" - a little, no nonsense place that served a large variety of delicious savory and sweet French crepes. Paul, Abby, and I loved that place. The abundant use of Nutella couldn't possibly have had any influence.... Abby started eating there since before she had teeth!

So, we had to quickly find a replacement restaurant to get our crepes fixes and we have in a trendy French cafe called "Crepes N Crepes" in Cherry Creek North in Denver. A little pricier, a little more sophisticated, but same wealth of a menu, though you do get what you pay for and their crepes are divine. Paul would have preferred a thinner batter and a crispier crepe, but I really, really like their chewier pancakes. Their "poulet au gratin" with sun-dried tomato pesto sauce is so perfect I think I'll have to order that a few more times before I could bring myself to order something else.

Here are a couple of pictures of Abby sitting at the back patio of the cafe, waiting for our order.

This past weekend, Abby got invited to a friend's birthday party. The family was throwing a joint birthday party for their 4 year old and 2 year old and it was held at a local indoor inflatable "gym" called Pump It Up! This was our first time attending a very Yuppie Birthday Bash, so we thought we'd check it out.

There were about 20 kids, only 4 of them age 2 and under. Abby was the youngest after an 18 month old, yet completely fearless.

She led the party, running into the play area and onto the first aparatus - a gigantic obstacle course with a massive slide at the end. She had no idea what she was getting into and took a good 5 minutes to climb up the steps for the slide, holding up the entire party. :) The very first picture here shows her finally making her way down that slide - obviously a little timid.

We did NOT expect her to actually come down on her own and were getting ready to climb up there ourselves to retrieve her, but to our surprise, she only hesitated briefly before sliding right down.

After the initial hesitance on the slide, though, she had a blast!

Here, she's making some friends, while munching on snacks and cake in the Party Room.

The girl who's got her arm around Abby was so sweet. She's 4 years old and was mesmerized by Abby for some reason from the moment we arrived at the party. When all the kids moved to the Party Room for cake and snacks, she picked Abby up and put her in the seat right next to her and started filling Abby's plate with food. I was stunned by her overwhelming maternal instincts!

Here's a picture of the birthday sisters - one's in pink and the other one's in polka dots.