Arriving in Colorado Springs

First Night -
So after a blast traveling around the US together (are we crazy that traveling almost 5,000 miles together was like a second honeymoon?!?!?) We arrived in our new state on the evening of July 9th. Like last time I was in C. Springs the weather was rainy and overall yucky….(I really was thinking that the 300 days of sun was a joke) We pull up to our “gated community” to find the gates wide open…. That was bad sign no. 1. We pull in our little driveway and there is a HUGE ugly bush right in front (mentally I am thinking that will be gone by tomorrow!!!) We mess with the lockbox and finally get the door open… Mind you at this point we are both tired and feeling emotional since this is the “end” of our trip…..We wander through the place, discovering light bulbs missing, upstairs toilet running, kitchen faucet sprays water everywhere, main floor carpet is nasty and massively stained and we begin to feel a little unsure about everything.

The movers are supposed to be coming the next morning, so we unload our car, use the cooler as a table and set up the aero bed on the first floor by the door to the backyard so we can get some breeze. (No AC and no fans!!!) We sit down and eat our P.F. Chengs take-out and draw a deep breath. Around 10:30 we finally get to bed. I knew myself well enough to know I was over-tired and emotional, so as we are talking in bed I tell Andrew that most likely I will cry over something in the next few days and just to be patient with me, he said he understood and that was ok.

I had set-up the bed with a bottom sheet, a top sheet and a light small blanket that Andrew’s grandma had just given us ( this is an important detail….the sheets were dark blue and there was fringe on the blanket) Andrew started falling sleep much quicker than I did….. As I am drifting often I feel something crawling on my skin (more specifically crawling on my arm that was near my face!!) . I “saw” the thing and it was big and black!!! I immediately scream and jump up…..Andrew freaks because he was mostly asleep and I had just scared the living daylights out of him….We shake out the blanket and top sheet and find nothing…then he takes off the bottom sheet and lifts up the areo bed…still nothing…. By this time he is asking me if I imagined it…did I actually see something????Anyone who knows me, knows I have lots of “issues” especially with texture, so I knew without a shadow of a doubt it was big, black and real (and not the fringe of the blanket and sheet like Andrew was suggesting) I did think it was a bug though which I was wrong about…After putting the bed back together and looking around the room, Andrew goes to the corner of the room where his jacket and some clothes were and picked them up…..Out runs a BLACK MOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I start screaming hysterically and Andrew starts yelling for me to get upstairs so he can kill it…. I run upstairs and stand up there sobbing and screaming, with my skin crawling, knowing it was a MOUSE in my bed, CRAWLING on my skin!!!!!!!!!!! My suitcase was upstairs so I quickly put on clothes and start yelling to Andrew I am going to sleep in the car…..He watched the mouse run into the fireplace and tells me it is safe to come downstairs to grab my pillow and purse and wait in the car….As I come downstairs and am talking to him another BLACK MOUSE comes running out from a hole in the bottom of the stairs…. I freak out all over again and go running outside. Andrew is so angry at this time and wants to immediately move out and light all the mice on fire (I was not opposed to that idea) We leave our place and go find a hotel at 11:30 at night! So much for our first night!