Meanwhile, we love living in Divide. Divide is 9,000 ft elevation so it is quite a bit higher than where we are building our house. That elevation creates a totally different climate. We seem to see more deer in our area. A few weeks ago we had a heard of about 40 elk that were hanging out in a pasture down the road for a few days. We have lots of Aspen and Spruce versus the Pondarosa Pines that dominate our property. Divide has also actually been warmer than where we are building it seems. I think Woodland Park had their first freeze almost two weeks before we did. There are no trees directly around our house so the sun heats our place up very nicely during the day.
The town of Divide is very small. I believe that it is incorporated by Teller County so there is no city government. We have two or three mom and pop type restaurants. No chains. There is a small grocery store called Venture Foods that carries Sure Fine products. It reminds me of a small version of Farmer's Market in Bloomfield. There is a post office and we get our mail in a shared box at the entry of the subdivision. Divide also has an elementary school.
We are about 9 miles from Woodland Park. It takes about 15 minutes to drive in for school every day. The girls are still getting used to the idea that we can't just run to the store every time they want something.
We get about 3 channels on TV with our antenna: NBC, ABC and Colorado public television. This is more than we got at the property in WP. We don't watch much TV anyway but we that has gone down even more. Sunday night football or an occasional peak at the weather is about it on the TV viewing for us. We did get the DVD player set up this week so the girls or we can watch a movie now and then. We still do not have internet. We use our data on our phone to check email or let Maddy use her math program on the computer but we do not currently have Netflix. We don't let the girls watch YouTube because it burns too much data. I love that screen time is not a daily fight anymore and, as of now, we don't plan to get internet at the house. Aaron has wifi at his office so we can come to the office to do things like upload pictures or anything that burns through lots of data.
It is often West Texas level windy. On the days it isn't windy, you can be out in shirt sleeves in 50 degrees because the sun is so intense. But if it is windy, it feels frigid even if the temperatures are much higher. We love being outside on the non-windy days. One of the fun things we've found to do is wagon surfing or sledding. I'm not sure what to call it. Anyhow, our neighborhood is all dirt roads. These roads are very hilly. So we will take the girls on a walk in the wagon. On the downhill part, Aaron will get in the wagon with the girls and they will ride down the hill. They get to going pretty fast but Aaron can use his feet as brakes so it works out great and the girls love it. Kelsay especially gets a major adrenaline rush from wagon surfing. When they get to the bottom of the hill she will yell "Woohoo! Woohoo!" over and over again and start doing donkey kicks in the wagon. It is hilarious!!
If it is a nice day without the wind, we'll eat dinner out on the picnic table. That hasn't happened recently as the evenings are starting to get pretty chilly.
Our house is pretty simple. I left a lot of things like books and decor in boxes. I hung a few pics to make it feel homey but it is pretty minimalist. I actually have enjoyed this immensely because we have little clutter and cleaning each week is not the burden it was in or house in Carrollton. Less sq. feet and being all on one level also helps with less to do cleaning wise. We left a lot of furniture because it was shot so we basically have a kitchen table with folding chairs, our beds, a futon and some bean bags as furniture.
I know that we will all be excited to get into our "real" house. Everytime we visit the property and seee the progress, I feel so much anticipation. But I know that a big part of me will miss the simple, in between life in Divide. And I don't think there are many places on earth that can match our mountain view and our sunsets each night.
Comments