Camping and...

HIKING! We're hiking Mt. Elbert this weekend. It's a 14er- one of Colorado's 53 14,000+ ft. mountains. Yeah, I'm about to hike up 14,000 feet. That's almost 3 miles high. We'll be hiking about 9 miles total. Our hike will start at 5AM on Saturday and we'll hopefully be down by 2 or 3. Since we're starting so early, we're going to camp out the night before. I haven't been camping in about 3 years and there's a little bit of a bear problem happening in the mountains right now. Let's hope we all live.

So to get ready for this trip, Krista and I had to pull out the winter digs...

Yeah, those are battery heated socks. It's going to be 35 degrees tomorrow night! In August! The plan is to sleep in the car if I get too cold. I know, I'm such a wimp. I'll give you an update on how it goes.

My New Spaces

Here are a few pictures of my new room!
And here are some before and after pictures of my new office...

Before

Before
And After

Design on a Dime Office Makeover-
Lamps: $30
Big Orange Chair: $10
Rugs: $11 for both at Pier One
FLMS Bulletin Board: $10
Paintings: Free (I did them)

TOTAL: $61- not too bad

New Job!

My new job is so much fun! I think I posted last time that I was going to be working in Elementary Schools, but in the true fashion of school districts, I showed up last Wednesday and found out that I'd be in a Middle School 4 days/week and an Elementary for one day/week instead. I am loving it though! Granted, we won't have any students until Monday, but all of the people I work with are fantastic! I have a huge office which is pretty unheard of and it's almost decorated. I'll post pictures when I get all of my papers put away.

I am really lucky this year because a friend of mine, Krista, is letting me rent a room in her condo- so I get to live closer to work and best of all, live with a great friend! I'm a little north of the city, but other than getting used to driving again, it's awesome! We have the best sunsets here...
... this is the view from our back porch. I eat dinner or read outside a lot, just so I can watch the sunsets. They're so different every day!

Last weekend my step-sister, Erin, and best friend, Claire, came to visit. I was really glad to have them here during my first few days of work. Things were really busy, but it was good to come home to people that I love! We went to a concert, for a nighttime cruiser ride in downtown denver (with a few hundred other people!), hiking, to a few breweries, and had a great time!
Here's us on the Cruiser ride- the theme was sci-fi. We didn't get too into our costumes.

Grad School Classes

I am finished with them.

Today was my last real class of grad school! I have to go to 10 more over the next year, but those don't even have assignments and are just to talk about out internships. Speaking of internships...

I have one! A paid one! I'll be the School Psychologist Intern at the only two elementary school in a small district northeast of Denver. Which basically means I'm the mental health person for both of those schools. I won't have any direct supervision- we had that last year in our Practicum and internship is where we practice doing everything on our own. There will be lots of people I can call if I need help though. I'll start next Wednesday and it should be fun. I don't know what to expect, so I'll let you know how things go!

text google

Did you know that you can send texts to google and they will send information back? It's true. You can send a question like "Who is John Doe?" and they will send an answer back. It's usually something like an address or phone number, but sometimes other random info too. You can also text the name of a place and get the address sent back to you. You could type "wine store broomfield, co" and they'll send you a few names and addresses and phone numbers. This might be one of the coolest things I've learned all week!

To do it, you just send your text to 466453 (google)

Wedding Dress Shopping!

Since Craig and I were engaged in March, I've been on a few trips to look for a wedding dress. I went to several places in Nashville with my wonderful Maid of Honor, Claire, and found a few dresses that fit well. None of them were what I was looking for, but I got some good ideas about what would look the best. I mean, have you ever been in one of those places?!? I don't know how anyone knows where to start. All the dresses look more or less the same on the hanger until you know a few specific features you're looking for.

I also got to go to a few places in Macon to look for a dress with my mom. That was really fun. Even when strange people are looking at you in your underwear and using bright orange electrical clips to hold a dress on your body, it's really fun to try on as many dresses as you want! I am not someone who will ever put on a dress and think it's "the one"- there are so many great ones!

So with all of my ideas in mind, I found a bridal shop near my new home in Broomfield that had a lot of dresses at great prices. One of my bridesmaids, Krista, and I went tonight to look for a dress. I'm pretty tired of thinking about my dress and am ready to move on to thinking about other things (like shoes and stationary!), so I was in the mood to make decisions. I tried on 4 dresses and have narrowed it down to 2! No, I'm not going to write about them on here- that's the one secret I get to keep from Craig for the next year! The dresses are beautiful and not at all what I had in mind when I first started my search, but now I couldn't imagine anything else.

Back at it...

So I haven't been very good at keeping up with the rhythm of the blog lately. I haven't felt like I have anything to say and that may be true. But I started the blog so family on the other side of the country could keep up with my Denver life and I feel like I could do better to write about what's going on out here. It'll probably be good for me too. I think everyone could stand to be a little more self-reflective.

I'll probably be writing a lot about wedding planning and my new job, but I'm going to try to add a few little extras in here. So family (and friends) let me know if you want to learn how to know when I update the blog. It's as easy as looking at your google homepage!