I’ve had nice little emails and texts from people who have been missing the blog – family from far away who only get to see us regularly through this medium and friends from afar who enjoy catching up on my life as I do theirs (even though I haven’t had time lately). I’ve been missing it too, along with other things. But work is the time bandit right now, stealing what precious time I used to use for blogging. It hasn’t been unusual lately for me to work 11 or 12 hours in a single day without a break. I know it won’t always be like this, but it is going to be different. Anyhow, let’s play catchup:
The Kids
The kids are having a great summer. Tabby is at school with Ben and both of them LOVE IT. She also has a couple of friends from school and other venues (a family friend, soccer) in her class and that makes her very happy. Ben was moved up to the next level at the beginning of the summer. This was bittersweet because he and his best friend, Cruz, were separated. However, it was in some ways for the best as they are a wild comedy duo and his behavior is improved.
We have been going swimming at least once weekly and traveling tons which the kids LOVE. They are both looking forward to our cruise immensely and Ben keeps asking to “see the Disney Cruise stuff!” whenever he sees Matt or I at the computer. Tabby is reading everything she comes across and has really stepped up her game big time. There’s not much now she can’t read, at least with a little help.
Matt and I
With me working so much, it’s been hard not being able to spend as much time with Matt. He’s also been picking up some major slack that I’ve dropped lately and doing it with grace and generally good humor. Since the weeks have been so crazy, we’ve been trying to get out for date nights whenever we can. We’ve tried out some new restaurants, gone to see some movies and been pretty lazy. It’s nice.
Training
Another thing we’ve been doing together is training! I am signed up for my first triathlon near the end of August and so I’ve been training with one of my friends and then sometime with Matt. It’s been some early morning swims in the pool and some weekend bike rides. A few weeks ago my friend and I did an open water swim. The best thing I can say about it was that I didn’t drown. Still, by the end of it, I had new confidence in my abilities and I feel like when I attempt it again later this week, I will do much better.
Aside from tri-training, the rest of my working out hasn’t been awesome. I was going to bootcamp only once or twice a week and since I’m going to miss the last two weeks of July anyway (since we’re traveling), I took the month of July off. The lack of fees alone paid for me wetsuit. Yay.
Travel
What’s probably compounded this whole work situation immeasurably is all the travel we’ve been doing on the weekends. A couple of weekends ago, we had our third camping trip of the season, to Cow Creek (above). It was wonderful, but it’s also been exhausting. In addition to camping, we went to Vail for the holiday weekend (and got back around 11:30 on Sunday night). We’re heading off for our big summer trip with Matt’s family in less than 2 weeks.
Still, we’ve had a wonderful time, and I want to share some of our adventures.
Work!
Despite the fact that I’m working hard, overall, I am really enjoying my new role. It is definitely not all rainbows and sunshine, but we’ve won a few projects since I’ve started and that is a really really awesome feeling. I get to do a lot of stuff I’m good at and enjoy, like laying out pretty marketing materials, managing databases and organizing things. It’s also an excellent challenge, which I really thrive on.
But my vacation in 2 weeks is going to be very very well deserved.
So that, in a nutshell, is life right now. I hope to make at least one more post this week and slowly get back to doing 3-5/week and also reading some of my other favorite blogs. Life is good. It’s just very very busy.
This past weekend we went camping at Sylvan Lake State Park, just outside Eagle, CO. It’s a beautiful Colorado State Park near a crystal clear mountain lake.
Gorgeous.
We spent lots of time out on the lake, canoeing around and “fishing.” The rangers at the park put on some good programs too and we went to the one about insects!
Everyone loved that. The kids caught damsel flies, bee flies (they’re flies that look like bees), grasshoppers and probably 10 more bugs I’ve already forgotten about.
We did a lot of relaxing which was great. We did make it up the pass to check out an old abandoned fishing camp. You could peek in the windows and see bunkbeds and wood stoves and newspapers from 1985.