We Made it!!!

We made it to Ridgway!!!
In fact we've been here for just over a week and as you can imagine we're still settling into small town life and our bodies are almost adjusted to the time change.
Melbe and I rolled in last week with a tornado (not the same storm that hit the mid west). We stayed just ahead of the actual funnel and Melbe kept recording the emergency service announcements as they aired on the radio. The storm passed and Fritz arrived late the next night and by Thursday morning we were up and tackling the house.
I drove 2800 miles without any issues, I drove into our parking lot and ended up with a flat. I drove over an allen screw. Since that was the second tire to be plugged in one year we sucked it up and bought some decent all weather tires so I'm now prepared for whatever these roads want to dish out come winter. After that was taken care of we unloaded our cars and I started on ripping out the carpet upstairs and setting up the home office/base camp. Fritz's first project is to clean up the random pipes, cables and other dead weight that has been hanging around in the house for who knows how long. He started in the basement and has done an excellent job, unfortunately I didn't take before pictures, but believe me, the basement has not looked this good in years. While Fritz was sawz-alling the basement he was deceived by what he thought was a dead water pipe. It was live and proceeded to give him an afternoon shower. It was a small one and no damage was done but we had our first taste of the advantages of small town life. We called our neighbor Joe for advice on a plumber and instead he came over and fixed it himself. So we're still working away, in fact Fritz just gave me crap for putting this together instead of working- whatever. Next week our attic windows will be installed- yeah! Right now the attic is completely open and although it makes it easier for the bats to move around we'd like to have it sealed up. Theresa and the Dane will be visiting to help
out and then the first week of June my parents will be in town for
the carnival/parade.
Our next adventure is securing a loan for renovations/construction.
We're gathering estimates, material costs and every other type of document you can think of.
Once we secure the loan we'll start on renovating the second floor, get the roof re-shingled, install new front and back doors, rip out the old driveway and put in as many new windows as we can afford.
Well this concludes our first posting. As I get time I'll travel backwards a bit to post pics from the road trip- which was amazing!!! And my goal is to keep everyone as up to date as time allows. And I don't want to totally bore everyone, so I'll make sure I have either dramatic pictures or interesting stories.
Until next time.... love and peace from the crazy kids at the Walnut St. ArtHouse