A big hello, from yours truly, a second-year PT student! I can’t believe how quickly my first year flew by, yet at the same time so much learning was packed into it I wonder how it was only a year. This summer was my first summer being a full-time student (I’m talking 15 credits, yikes!), so it was definitely a little hard to be sitting in a classroom for nearly 8 hours a day, five days a week, but as you read in our last post, we still made the most of our first Colorado summer! And so far, year two here in CO has not disappointed!
Last day of summer semester with Stacey and Hillary!
Once I wrapped up, I had three weeks off of school which was extremely welcome. Jeremiah’s brother, Nathan, visited us that first weekend in August to kick it off! His visit included a trip to Water World with the Hunts- Jeremiah’s CO Springs relatives, Little Man Ice Cream, Wynkoop brewery where we discovered they have free pool tables, Frisbee in the park, games at home, and other miscellaneous activities. It’s always a fun time to have Nathan in town and he helped make it a great start to my break!
Jeremiah and I had a fun date night at mini golf!
My parents were the next visitors to come in August. They were in town not only to see us, but also to see a professional bike race in Vail! We spent a few days here in Denver that included a visit to Barr Lake state park and a bike ride with my dad. Then my parents and I headed up to Frisco where they planned to stay for a couple nights to be closer to Vail for the bike race. Unfortunately Jeremiah couldn’t come with us due to work, but I brought him back a delicious treat from a cookie shop so that helped. My dad and I did a ride with some of his bike group that also came up from Phoenix. This was a tough ride for me, because I don’t usually ride quite so fast and the first half was pretty much entirely uphill! It was a great challenge though, and I had a really great time. Especially taking in the beautiful mountain scenery that surrounded us. In addition to the ride, we wandered around Frisco, had dinner with the bike group, did some shopping, and of course headed up to Vail to watch the pros. Even though in professional cycling you only see them zoom by every once in a while, there is still something really exciting about watching them bike so fast and so close together! I said goodbye to my parents and they drove home from Frisco and I headed back home to Jeremiah!
In my time off I have also done quite a bit of reading which I always treasure since I rarely get to read for fun during school. As a matter of fact my first stop on my first day off was to the library where I just browsed around for a while! I read Me Before You, The Identicals, Unbroken, and The Glass Castle and highly recommend all of them! Especially the last two.
Jeremiah and I successfully summited our second “14er” over my break as well! We were really hoping to “double summit” meaning hit two summits over 14,000 feet in one day because the peaks are so close together, but some serious fog rolled in as we approached the top of the first one, and we didn’t think it wise to continue to the second. And good thing too, because it started raining pretty heavily on our hike down! This just gives us a reason to go back again another time! I also did a really great hike called “Royal Arch” with my friend Stacey. It was basically a stair stepper to the top, but definitely worth the views! And I do like a good challenge. I want to take Jeremiah back another time for this hike, because it was a little smoggy that day too. In between activities and visitors, I picked up a few days of work at the bow place I worked at last summer called Wunderkin. It is pretty easy work, but it was nice to be back there working and making a little bit of money!
Gray's Peak with literally no view from the top because of fog!
View of Flatirons from Royal Arch!
Toward the end of my break I finally left for my much-anticipated trip to Rochester! My family had a big reunion-type trip to Pineridge in Canada the week before my finals, so I of course couldn’t go, which was pretty devastating. But I knew I had to get out there to see some family once I had the time off. Jeremiah once again wasn’t able to go, but again I brought him back a treat! I will say I am so thankful to have a husband who works so hard and supports me in so many ways. Rather than just me being in school, he says that we are both in this grad program together, because it really does take a team effort and so much help and understanding from him. I really don’t think I could do this without him! Needless to say, I was very excited for my Rochester trip. I stayed with my Aunt Gail and Uncle George which I had never done before, and it was a great opportunity to spend more time with them! I also got to spend some really great quality time with my Grandma Warren which I always treasure. My trip included dinner at the lake house with some of my cousins and their kids, a bike ride with my grandma, my favorite Carmine’s for lunch, a walk through a park with my cousin, a visit to the farmer’s market, a stop at Wegman’s, Abbott’s frozen custard, dinner at my grandma’s apartment, and Upwords! I also had a day planned out by my Great Aunt Doris that included a walk at Turning Point Park, a visit to High Falls, a stop for lunch at Doris’ apartment, a boat ride on the Erie Canal, dinner in Pittsford along the canal, and a fun show called “Carole’s Kings” to end the day! It was definitely an unusual trip being there on my own, but I had a great time making new memories! I brought my GoPro along to take some video, but didn’t end up getting a whole lot. Nevertheless, if you want to watch this video, I threw some of the clips together here.
Carmine's Steak Sub!
A couple days after I arrived home from Rochester I started my first clinical rotation! As part of my school program, in addition to the normal classes, you have four rotations which basically are full-time working in a variety of settings in order to get hands-on experience and skills to be better equipped to enter the workforce! Essentially like an internship for healthcare careers. This first one is six weeks long (they get progressively longer at 8 wks, 12 wks, and 12 wks) and I am working in a Skilled Nursing Facility in Boulder, CO. It’s just about a 30 min drive from home which isn’t too bad, and it is a really beautiful drive into Boulder, so I can’t complain! Also, for those of you who may not know, a Skilled Nursing Facility or “Sniff” as we like to call it, is a transition for people coming from the hospital who are not quite ready to go home yet. So as a PT we are trying to get them ready to go back home, wherever that is! For many people this requires being able to get in and out of bed safely, walk around their home safely, possibly having to climb stairs to get in their home, etc. It is pretty much entirely an elderly population, and I am really enjoying it! It is definitely a totally new side of PT for me. It is really rewarding to watch the patients’ progress and I am learning a lot about performing initial evals, documentation, setting goals, and many other things. This type of setting doesn’t have a lot of manual work as many PT jobs do, so I will look forward to gaining more experience in that way in my future rotations hopefully! I have about two weeks left of this first one and then I will be back to Regis for an 8-week condensed semester. I’m really looking forward to seeing my friends and classmates again and I do enjoy learning in a school setting, but I will say I have loved the homework-free evenings for the past few weeks! A glimpse toward my future post-school!!
You probably thought I was done with trips and visitors, but alas I am not! I made a trip to AZ (solo… again. Sorry, Jeremiah!) for my friend Emily’s bachelorette party! It was so much fun!! Her fiancée helped fly me in a little earlier in the evening than Emily expected to surprise her which was so nice of him, and awesome for me because I got to go out with all of the girls that night. We had a really cute Airbnb near Downtown Phoenix that we stayed in for two nights. The first night we went out to a couple places for drinks, one of which we went to for my Bachelorette party. I hadn’t been back since, so it was especially fun to be back there! Saturday’s activities included Cat Yoga, brunch at Postino, a piñata and cute crafty things in the afternoon, horseback riding, dinner in old town Scottsdale, and movie and nail painting that night! Sunday morning, Emily’s maid of honor, her sister, put together a nice little bagel bar for breakfast. As a matter of fact, her sister did a fantastic job with all of the planning and details! I think everyone, especially Emily, had a great time. Fortunately this was over Labor Day weekend, so I had some additional time in AZ to spend with family! I stayed with my parents and everyone came over for a pool day and dinner at their house. Sunday afternoons in summer at my parents house are the best. Always family pool time with good food! What more could you want? I was also able to do a little neighborhood bike ride with my parents, have brunch with Jeremiah’s family including his mom’s delicious cinnamon rolls! Yum!! And I finished off the trip with Barro’s pizza with my parents, Emily, and B&T and kids! It felt like a really quick trip, but as always it was great to be there and see everyone!
Cat Yoga!
The following weekend Heather, Madeline, and Luke came to visit us! Woohoo! I love family time! We had a great time showing Denver off to them. While my family does come to Colorado every year, everyone always heads straight up to Beaver Creek, so no one had spent much time in Denver. So we love to show it off! We explored Pearl Street in Boulder where the kids absolutely loved the splash pad, we went to Chuck E Cheese per Madeline’s request, wandered around Downtown Denver, played games at home, went to the park right by our apartment, made dinner, visited Stanley Marketplace, and went to Little Man Ice Cream! Can you tell we like to take guests there??
We made it to our second Red Rocks concert to see NeedtoBreathe!
My friends from school Cathy and Lexy joined us at Red Rocks!
Jeremiah and I are currently doing something called “The Contentment Project” with our small group. Each week is a different topic where you choose to challenge yourself related to that topic in order to learn how you can be more content in your life. This week has been “Entertainment” and we have chosen to limit ourselves to only 30 minutes of digital media per day (social media, podcasts, Netflix, etc) and on Saturday we had zero digital media! It has indeed been a challenge, but a nice change of pace!
Phew, I think we are caught up! We had a lot going on, but the past couple weeks have been pretty quiet and should continue to be until mid-October. We will be in AZ in October celebrating Tommy and Emily’s wedding and we can’t wait!! Until next time… Thanks for reading!
