T minus 3 days

Hi everyone-
This is Daniel writing today. Today is our last day in Denver before the big trip. We spent most of yesterday and today just wrapping up loose ends before we leave. Yesterday I woke up at 3:30 AM to bring Nicole and Mike to the airport. It was so nice to spend time with them while they were here.

When I got home, instead of going back to sleep, I started to check things off our list. First, while I watched the sun rise, (I don’t do that very often, but it was beautiful!) I took all of the stuff that has been cluttering our back yard and moved it into the shed. I’m sure we’ve complained about the shed to you, but in case you don’t know, the bought this shed and when they came to deliver it, the guys car couldn’t fit into our back yard, so he just left it in our driveway with a promise to come back by the end of the week. 3 weeks and many, many angry phone calls later, it was still sitting in our front yard. When Rachel and I left for Estes Park it was there and when we came home from Estes, it was in the back yard! They didn’t call or anything they just showed up and moved it! Anyway, I finished organizing the shed, called all of our financial institutions to tell them we are going to Europe, and cleaned the house a little before Rachel woke up. When she got up we figured out all of our finances. Each of us has paid for things for our trip and it ended up being very confusing figuring out exactly how much each of us was owed from our savings account and how much we have to spend on food and entertainment while we are there. We eventually figured it out and it turns out we have about 150 euros a day for that stuff! We went to the bank to get all of the money moved and had lunch when we got home. We spent the afternoon crossing things off of our list and making the CDs that the students ordered from my summer music camp. That has turned out to be a huge chore! I recorded all of the concerts during camp and we sold them to the campers. Now I have to make them all into CDs and label and duplicate them. Unfortunately, I don’t have all of the fancy equipment that Double R Video owns so I have to print out each label, stick it on each CD, and put the CD into my computer to burn the concert on it. On top of that, Rachel helped me address all of the envelopes and figure out what goes in them. I am actually still duplicating CDs as I write this. Hopefully I’ll finish tonight. At the end of the day, we made dinner and had a lovely candle lit dinner in our home and watched a movie. (while I duplicated CDs)

Today we woke up and I made us breakfast, an omelet for me and oatmeal for Rachel. We cleaned up the house a little bit more and then hit the yard. We mowed and weed ate the lawn. While we were mowing the front yard, Rachel screamed at the top of her longs and pointed at my feet. I thought I had cut off my toe or something! Paul ran out of the house to see what happened and then I saw a small snake slithering towards our neighbors yard with a big gash on its back. I felt terrible, but I think it was ok, because next time I looked for it, I couldn't find it so it must have slithered away. When we finished all of that, it was on to ricksteves.com to start packing for our trip. We finished packing relatively quickly and packed so lightly that we have room in our bags for souvenirs! We went through all of our paper work and tickets and made sure we had everything we needed. Our ipods are synced, our cameras are empty, our GPS is programmed, and everything is all charged up. We are so excited. This trip has been a whole year in the works and now it is just a few days away! Tomorrow I have to go to the music school to send out these CDs then Burt and Laura are going to pick us up and the four of us will drive back to Phoenix. Tuesday, we are spending there then Wednesday at 8:30 AM we will be off to the airport. We land at around 10:00 AM in Madrid on the 16th! Just so you know, everywhere we are going in Europe is in the same time zone, GMT +1 or 8 hours ahead of Denver and 9 hours ahead of Phoenix.