Hoooot!

Owl be sure to have a good time tonight!

visitors!

We had our first visitors, which after saying that I realize includes both to our new place and of the entire year! People, you have to come out to Colorado! The pictures in this post just might convince you if you were wavering at all. Our recent guests were so much fun to have and they were here for over a week so we were spoiled with homemade meals ready when we were done with work and school, dinners at our favorite restaurants, perusing the local thrift stores, grilling in the backyard, playing with the dogs and taking in the mountains. It was a busy time! JP's mom, Judy, and stepdad, Jim, drove up from Alabama to try their hand at road tripping and to help us settle in to our home. You might remember that for a while we had maybe one chair and a coffee table as our furniture, but that has all changed thanks to Judy and Jim, and we are fully furnished and ready for our next guests. So, on to some pictures of the week:


The first weekend they were here we did a trip to Estes Park as Jim had never been there. It's a great short drive from Denver and it really gets you into the mountains. From Estes, we drove into Rocky Mountain National Park and attempted to drive up Trail Ridge Road (which you might remember from such things as me biking it this summer). Unfortunately, just seven or eight miles up we were turned around because of supposed four feet drifts of snow across the road. It's too bad we couldn't take them to the top because the views there are absolutely breathtaking, but as a consolation it did snow on us just as we were getting out of the car to take some pictures. Jim and Judy were pretty much delighted to get the real Colorado mountain experience!

We also got to see some wildlife to add to the experience! Credit goes to Judy for snapping this photo even though she was freezing in the wind!

The following weekend we drove to Pike's Peak, which Jim and I had never been too, and it was quite a sight to see. At just over 14,000 feet it was pretty incredible and there was snow all around. I think the temperature dropped about 25 degrees from the bottom of the mountain to the top of it. We took lots of pictures:

JP and I of course had to have a little snowball fight, but it was short lived because it was so cold!

Yin even had some guests of her own, and they got along really well! With a big yard for them to play around in, and a neighbor dog to bark at, all three of them were pretty content. Of course the trip couldn't have been complete without a scooter ride:

I think they are hooked now!

clue two

Shhh..I know I should be studying, but look how much fun I've been having! We had visitors all last week (which I will blog about next), and with school and interviews and such I haven't had any time to work on my costume. My sister left me a voicemail saying she had come up with the best costume for this year and wanted me to be the first to know what it's going to be... then, as she was leaving the message, she thought better of it and decided to hold her idea ransom until she figured out what mine was. SO, costume time it is!! Behold, clue(s) two:

I got a few more kinds of fabric at the thrift store, the one on the top is this really cute table cloth and for the costume I think it will add just the right touch.

After being jealous of Carol's craft mat I finally got my very own one last week at the fabric store. I love it so much! In fact the first time I have gotten to use it was earlier today when I was pasting together a graph for my biology lab report. I go to a real college I swear. But, also pictured are a pair of fabric scissors that I inherited from my grandma. I love that I got a pair, she used a number of different ones, and they are a real solid reminder of her for me. Every time I sew I hope she's checking out my latest project.

The pattern...

And the work station.. see my biology notes in the corner? I was studying at one point today..


Kind of a mess, but so much fun! Do you know what I'm going to be??

at long last

I've been holding off on writing much about my job search, mostly I think because I didn't want to jinx it, but rest assured that in the almost two months since I've been back in the real world I hav ebeen searching every job site out there. I'm working with a resume that is so childcare and restaurant heavy, that finding a job in the health care field was frustrating and for the most part fruitless. I basically look like a new CNA graduate, especially after having only gotten my Colorado certificate last month, and most of the places I talked to had so many applicants that they simply weren't hiring anyone with less than a year of recent hospital experience. My slightly beefed up resume gives me about eleven months of experience five years ago. That's the beefed up version! Things were looking pretty grim when I found a hospital that was taking applications for open house interviews. I figured that if my resume couldn't really sell me, I would have to sell me, so I applied. Literally twenty minutes later I got a rejection email from them, indicating that I didn't have exactly what they were looking for. I was so frustrated! I was rejected in less time than it took me to put together the entire application! LAME!! I put it out of my mind and then three days before the interviews I got an email from them asking me to come. I assumed it was a fluke, that they had been meaning to email an Elizabeth Welch or Welsh or some other similar sounding name, and I almost didn't even go. I sucked up my pride and put on my one surviving interview outfit and went to the hospital. Things actually went well, and the interviewer seemed to like me a lot, but there were a ton of applicants and there were only two available positions so I chalked it up to good interview experience and tried to put it all out of my mind. Low and behold I received a phone call a few days later asking for a second interview! The second interview took place last Thursday, and was a typically intimidating experience. I hate the anxiety of those kinds of things that make my mind go blank when required to think of a specific event in which I demonstrated leadership or good communication skills or what have you. Why can't my brain and mouth ever work together during interviews? I feel like I get all stuttery and shakey..but in reality it must have gone well, or maybe that's how everyone gets during interviews. Two workers took me out on the floor to show me what they do everyday, and how things work in the facility. Everyone I talked with took care to tell me that this will be the hardest job I ever have, but if I can make it there I can make it anywhere. The interviewer also let me know that if I really want to be a PA, this is the place that I need to be. SO, as I am sure you have now deduced, I GOT THE JOB!! They called last night to offer me the position and I happily accepted. I am officially a working CNA in Long Term Acute Care (LTAC) at Vibra Hospital. The only thing I am a little worried about, aside from my complete lack of experience, is that they want to train me on days and then start me working nights. JP and I will have opposite schedules, and with school sandwiched in their somewhere we will practically never see each other! I know we will figure it all out and adjust to this new chapter in life, even though it may take a lot of time. I can't help but think that this is the start to it all. Working full time, going to school, studying, applying to PA school for now. Once I (hopefully) get accepted into a program and begin PA school, those two years will be hugely challenging and demanding of all my time and energy. Here I go!

just $8.00. seriously.

Okay folks, I am sure you have heard about ordering glasses online, and how cheap that can be. My friend, and old roommate, Carol bought some from one of those websites after her expensive ones were smashed in a car accident. I don't know why I didn't jump on the band wagon then, or when a regular at a restaurant I used to work at boasted about his five new pairs that were coming in the mail. I think I just tuned it out as too good to be true or something. But no longer, no longer. My real life glasses have a prescription that is laughably outdated. Well, laughable in the sense that I couldn't see anything that was more than a few inches from my nose, and what I could see would go in and out of focus as my eyeballs strained to correct themselves. I don't wear them too much and so I didn't want to deal with finding and going to an eye doctor and paying hundreds of dollars to replace and update them. Then a small light bulb popped into my head and I started checking out glasses websites. After calling my old optometrist and getting a string of confusing numbers, JP and I started browsing the $8 section on Zenni Optical. It's hard to tell what they will look like, even with the websites zoom feature, but at only $8 a pop and shipping costs the same no matter how many pairs you buy you can't really go wrong. So I ordered a pair with red wire rims and a plastic pair that was the closest style to my current pair that I could find. A few weeks later, TAAA DAAAAA:


Don't they look nice?! A friend of mine who just got glasses for the first time said "it's like everything I see is in High Definition now!" and that is completely true for me too. I really had not realized how horrible my prescription was, and now I can see everything!! It's fun to have options too, I've never owned more than one pair of glasses at a time and now I can switch it up if I want! Plus, if they end up breaking in my bag or in an accidental sitting-on incident it doesn't matter too much cause they were so cheap! I couldn't get a good shot of the glasses actually on my face (the fact that I was wearing contacts at the same time might have had something to do with that..), but here is the best one:

it's that time of year again!

Okay folks, here is the first peek at my Halloween costume. I am really, really excited about it! In fact, as soon as I post these pictures I am going to start cutting that fabric!

I've got a couple more fabrics, but I think they might be in JP's car. Clue two should be ready soon!

officially a dork on two wheels

Although you might have thought that I already was a dork on two wheels, now, according to my sweet boyfriend, I officially am. Yes I spent the summer fully clad in spandex while riding a bicycle everywhere, which is pretty high on the dork-o-meter in my opinion, but now I own a scooter. A SCOOTER. That was just in case you needed a double take. Because, guys, I OWN A SCOOTER.


Who knew such good could come out of having my car stolen? With my auto nowhere to be found, the insurance company cut me a check. I lucked out because my beloved MN rust bucket, okay it was only a little rusty but in Colorado a little is a ton, was declared to be in average condition since the insurance company had never seen the car, and I got more money than I thought I would. In fact, they ended up giving me more than I paid for the car in the first place. I'll take it! I had to! All this leads up to this weekend when my dream of owning a scooter was finally realized. I wasn't excited about looking for a new car, nothing was jumping out and it seemed like it would be a long and frustrating process. The rental car my insurance is paying for is up on Wednesday, and I didn't want to rush into buying a car just to have a vehicle. Ever since Annie brought me along on her hunt for the perfect scooter, which ended in an awesome little red scoot, I was hooked. Before this whole debacle I couldn't really justify buying a scooter, but with the extra money I can (kinda of) justify it now! Besides, I LOVE IT. That's justification enough....err, maybe not, BUT I am still looking for a car while I scoot around the city in style. Now I've got more time to figure things out, and am getting 100 mpg while I do.

Plus, Annie said we could start a scooter gang together and that's about as cool/dorky as it gets.