Virtual Christmas Card #2

Happy New Year! Since Jeremiah and I don’t send out Christmas cards (maybe we will in the future) this will continue to serve as our virtual Christmas card. This year was much less eventful than 2017, but it was great in its own, more quiet way. 2018 mostly consisted of settling into life in Colorado. I finished the first half of PT school! How crazy is that?? So much closer, yet still feels so far! We joined a small group with great friends that we love, we have filled our schedules with game nights and dinners with friends, we hiked our first two 14ers (with hopes to do 3 more in 2019), traveled to three new national parks, together we travelled to AZ, CA, KS, and UT and had many trips into the mountains here! Jeremiah travelled to MN on his own, and I traveled to NY twice and AZ once on her own. We also had many visits from family and friends! We are looking forward to even more travel and exploration in 2019! 

Since I last wrote, I finished up my first clinical rotation at the SNF in Boulder. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it and it was a great, much needed break from the classroom to get my feet wet in the field! This May/June I have been placed in my second rotation in McPherson, KS. I can’t remember if I’ve previously mentioned this on here, but my school requires that we do one of our rotations in a rural setting and one out-of-state, or you can combine them into one rural and out-of-state setting which is what I have elected to do! Fortunately, Jeremiah has family in rural Kansas, so I am able to stay with his grandparents in Salina, KS during my rotation. I have never lived anywhere rural, so even though it will only be for 8 weeks, I am interested to experience something new and of course I’m anxious to get back out into the real-world of PT! I headed back into the classroom for a condensed 10-week semester October – December and it was as crazy as ever, but really enjoyed a couple of my classes this semester. Starting Monday I will embark on a full 16-week, 18-credit semester which is the biggest credit load yet, so I am a little anxious, but I know I can just take it a week at a time and get it done! 

Jeremiah is continuing his work at Lockheed Martin. They keep him busy and working hard, but he is happy to have the work to keep him moving. They have had so many new employees in his department he feels like a veteran by now even though he’s only been there about a year and a half! He is such a valuable, hard-working team member! He was even asked in early December by his former boss to speak on behalf of his department to a number of Lockheed managers about what he is doing in the department, what the department is doing, and suggestions he has for future progress and changes. It was challenging, but a really great experience for him!

In October Jeremiah and I got to travel to AZ to celebrate our best friend’s Tommy and Emily’s wedding! We had such a great time! Jeremiah was able to travel out for an entire week. He was the best man so he had planned the Bachelor party for the weekend before the wedding, so he went down for that and then stayed there for a nice week in AZ before I joined him the following Friday right before the wedding. At the Bachelor party they rented an Airbnb in downtown Gilbert, played Bubble Soccer, went to a rage room, grilled steaks, and did an escape room! He said it was a blast and I think Tommy had a great time too. If you don’t have any idea what some of those activities are, I have attached pictures so you can get an idea. Basically, great activities for a bunch of boys wanting to be boys! The rest of his week in AZ he met up with some of his friends, spent great time with his family, and visited with my family too. When I joined him on Friday, we pretty much went straight into wedding festivities because I was also in the wedding. The venue was a little bit far in Rio Verde, AZ, but it was a beautiful setting of desert surrounded by mountains. The church the ceremony was in was also gorgeous with stained glass and high ceilings. We had the rehearsal at the church and then drove into Scottsdale to a place called Classic Cooking for the rehearsal dinner. This was probably the coolest rehearsal dinner I have been to because it was a cooking class! There were a few different stations that we could choose to help make part of the meal so Jeremiah and I chose rolling out the pasta (and subsequently bought a pasta maker a few weeks after). Other stations included making Caesar dressing for the salad, making the pasta, preparing the chicken and veggies, and making Biscotti. It was really fun, interactive, and actually pretty informative! The next day I was to arrive at the place we were getting ready at 9 am, Jeremiah was closer to 11 or noon I think. We got ready at a gorgeous house overlooking at golf course, a family friend of theirs’ house. It is always so fun getting ready in anticipation of a wedding! I got my hair done and did my own makeup, and we all just hung around and talked, ate lunch, and got excited for the evening to come. The wedding itself, and Emily, were so beautiful! We both felt really lucky to be able to stand up by them and support them and their love! After the ceremony we went to the reception venue, participated in pictures, and then danced the night away! We have a lot of mutual friends with Tommy and Emily, so it was a big party/reunion for us too. The day after the wedding we fortunately didn’t fly out until late that night, so I was able to see my family and we spent the day hanging out with them.

In November we had a visit from Jeremiah’s family. We took them to Breckenridge to explore for the day, tried a new restaurant for dinner, went to Longmont to be with some extended family, and played games. It was extra fun that it was snowing that weekend too, because Jeremiah’s brother, Nathan, had actually never experienced a snowfall (at least in his memory). A little tougher for driving, but we managed. It was nice to have them for a visit in November since we weren’t going to be spending Thanksgiving with them this year. Instead on Thanksgiving we headed down to Colorado Springs to spend the day with Jeremiah’s extended family. It was a great day of family, food, and of course, giving thanks! This Thanksgiving we were especially thankful for the opportunities Jeremiah and I have at work and in school, as well as God’s beautiful creation that we get to enjoy so regularly. On our way back from CO Springs we stopped at the outlet mall right on our way for some black Friday shopping and were actually quite successful! Including some things for ourselves… 

The very next weekend was my family’s annual trip to Beaver Creek. We got so lucky with how great the weather was this year: so many runs open, fresh powder, and ski in/ski out of our resort. My family arrived on Wednesday and fortunately I had no classes on Friday so we were able to make it up Thursday night. Once again it is so nice just being able to throw things in the car and drive only two hours to get there. As always I absolutely love having my whole family together! We skied, played games, went to the Grotto, and just lounged around. My birthday fell the day after the trip this year, but I was still able to celebrate with everyone there. Also, fortunately, this was my last year where Beaver Creek will fall right before finals! It is always sort of stressful planning ahead for the trip and then having to study like crazy right once I’m back. Next year I will be right in the middle of a rotation so that won’t be the case! Woohoo, finally! 

During my practicals and finals weeks Jeremiah was just as crazy with work as I was with school, so we were very thankful when December 19^tharrived and we hit the road on our way to AZ! But this time instead of driving straight there we stopped at three national parks – Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Arches, and Canyonlands. We also drove through Monument Valley before arriving at my family’s cabin in Pinetop, AZ. I made a video of the trip, though it isn’t super exciting because it is mostly just scenery, but feel free to watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvopfSzTCXY&t=3s

About an hour into our drive the first day we hit a large screw in the road which caused a flat tire and subsequently two new back tires from Big O Tires. Fortunately we weren’t far from the tire shop and it wasn’t too much of an issue. And that was really our only hiccup in the trip! So in Black Canyon we tried snowshoeing for the first time, Arches we did a lot of great hiking, and Canyonlands we did some smaller hikes and sightseeing. You can see more details in the video. My parents got us a National Park Annual Pass for Christmas, so we have already made good use of that and are looking forward to more use throughout the year. Also on our road trip down we decided to start a podcast! Jeremiah bought me a podcast microphone for my birthday so we had a fun time recording that. We are going to continue recording periodically mostly for our enjoyment, but definitely check it out! We have an Instagram where we post the link called @dwightdownload or if you look up “The Dwight Download” on SoundCloud you can listen to our first two episodes there. https://soundcloud.com/user-703169463/episode-1-intro

 Changing the flat tire!

 Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Delicate Arch (on Utah license plates)

Recording our first podcast episode!

Canyonlands

Once we made it to AZ we had such a nice time! We saw both of our families the first night we were there, going to straight to a birthday dinner for my grandma at my aunt’s house where we saw my whole family, then to Jeremiah’s parents’ house to stay for the night. We spent all of Christmas eve with his family doing church, dinner, desserts, and presents. Then all of Christmas day with my family doing breakfast, presents, games, and dinner. We also got my parents a pizza oven for Christmas so they tried that out and it turned out to be delicious. The next few days we stayed at my parents’ house and went to dinner and a place called Main Event with the family, made more pizzas for dinner one night, jumped on the trampoline with Paisley and Parker, celebrated Preston’s 2^ndbirthday, went on a hike in the Superstition mountains, and saw the new Mary Poppins movie. Then we finished the trip by staying at Jeremiah’s parents’ house. We worked all week on and off on a very difficult 1000-piece puzzle, went bowling, had a few nice dinners in, kicked off New Years night with them, played games, and watched Incredibles 2. We also managed to squeeze in a brunch with my friends Morgan, Marsie, and Aaron, had dinner and a night at the symphony with Tommy and Emily (they got us symphony tickets for Christmas!), rang in the new year playing games at Tommy and Emily’s, and had dinner with our old small group. It sounds like a lot, and I guess it was, but it felt like we had a nice long time there this year so we weren’t always on the go but were still able to do many fun things.

We did the drive back to CO in one day, and were very ready to be home by the end of the day. We had the weekend to get settled back in, do some things around the house, and still had extra time for some relaxing before Jeremiah was back to work on Monday. He fell back into routine pretty quickly, I think! As for me I still have until next Monday, so I am cherishing the quiet time at home. 

Once again, happy 2019! We hope the year has started off well for you and we are looking forward to what this year will bring for us. Thanks for reading!  

We went to the ASU v CU game here in CO! We lost but had a great time cheering for our visiting team!

They put our favorite AZ restaurant, Oregano's, an hour away from us in Fort Collins, CO!! We were sooo excited. 

The pizookie is so good. I mean look at it!

I went to a CO APTA conference in Vail, CO with a few of my classmates.

A beautiful hike with my friend Stacey once we finished the semester!

A favorite ornament on our tree. We love decorating for Christmas and we love sitting in our living room with only the Christmas lights on.