Happy Memorial Day!

What a full week it has been! Literally all Thursday and Friday I spent cleaning my room. I have been going through old stuff and sorting stuff and throwing away LOTS of stuff. I have found recently that I really really love getting rid of stuff - whether it's donating it or taking it to the dumpster. I have filled almost 2 giant trash bags, plus a box of stuff to donate. So much happy!! I did find this treasure though:

I used to have several glass dolls - I never played with them, but I loved having them. But almost every single one of them had a foot broken off. I guess that was my trademark with dolls. I was super surprised to find this one with both feet intact!

And I finally got to try a new recipe the other night! On Saturday my mom asked me to cook dinner so I took the opportunity to go gourmet. I saw a huge bag of quinoa in the cabinet, so I went the route of Aztec food. I made quinoa black bean burrito bowls, I found the recipe here: Quinoa Black Bean Burrito Bowls. They were good! When I told my Dad what I was cooking he was not very excited, but he said that he actually liked it! They were really good, only my brother didn't finish his, but he's a snooty eater so it didn't surprise me. Here's my finished product:

And finally, some other random things I want to share with you:

I ordered a german phrase book this week! Should be here soon, Austria here I come!

My shin splints are back. I swear my body hates me! Never have I successfully run more than a couple weeks without problems. So if any of you have suggestions, send them my way!

Favorite new hobby: looking up million dollar homes for sale - some people live in such extreme luxury. It makes me sick, but I kinda enjoy it at the same time.

And my cat, she has started leaving Josh's bed for my bed at night. Victory!!

Summery

Oh summer, it's such a weird time in college. I've actually been able to fill up my time this week! Of course while still getting plenty of sleep and TV time in :) Monday was a nice lazy day. I called back some of the places I have applied at and got some more NOs. I also went for a nice, way-too-long run. I mapped a new route on Sunday that took me out of the neighborhood a little bit. It was nice to go a new way, though running along one of the main drags in town is a little intimidating. I'm still getting used to the hills around my house and getting back into running shape. And of course you have to run when you are "out in public". Suffice it say that I won't be running that route for a while, that stretch made my legs BURN. And I was starving the whole rest of the day, SO hungry.

Tuesday I went shopping with a friend and her new baby sister from S. Korea!! She is the most precious little girl - so adorable! And today I explored downtown with a friend to celebrate her birthday!! 25 - SO OLD! haha. So this paragraph and a half that I have written is about everything that has happened. The rest of the week I plan to practice and clean my room/go through old stuff. Vienna is on the horizon and I need to whip some music into shape. I had a nightmare the other night that it was the day of my senior recital and I didn't have everything memorized. SOO terrifying. Ugh, it puts knots in my stomach just thinking about it. But I comfort myself with this thought: at least there's a recital hearing 2 weeks in advance. haha!

Well, hopefully I will start doing things worthy of blogging. I'm going to try some new recipes and start some crafting. We have a fancy new sewing machine and I was inspired by all the artsy fartsy people downtown today. woohoo!

Education

No I'm not going to write about education, haha. I actually don't have much to write about today. And since it's late and you know I need my beauty sleep, I'll keep it short. This morning we got up and headed out to some friends' graduation ceremony. It was super nice! There were only 15 graduates, so the ceremony was really personal and neat. As a senior in college, it's amazing how young these graduates look! Did I seem that young when I graduated? Man, I know I thought I was awesome and so mature. ha. ha. ha.

I also watched The Incredible Hulk tonight - how exciting. I saw The Avengers with friend before school ended and I hadn't seen any of the previous movies! But it was SUCH a great movie. So my summer goal was to watch the rest of them. Fortunately, my family was in the process of watching all the movies BEFORE they went to see Avengers. So I've already finished Hulk, Iron Man 1 & 2, and got to see the Avengers again. Now to get a hold of Thor and Captain America. I may have to rent those, but what's $3 for two good movies?

Also!! Best news ever. My good good friend just brought home her new adopted baby sister from South Korea!! I will hopefully meet her soon!

Summer Searching

What a week it's been! For having nothing to do, I sure have not had much down time. Tuesday I was able to go to coffee with another long-time friend. We talked and walked around downtown and laughed a lot. You know, relationships are probably one of the most important things to me. But I really have to work at them, and over the past few years I've been learning what it means to be a good friend and how to have healthy relationships. I feel like I could write a book on my mistakes and things I've learned - but I'm sure that no one would want to read it, haha. The biggest thing that I struggle with is honesty. It is SOOOO much easier for me to hide things than to have to deal with trying to explain my feelings to someone. Especially if I don't like the way I feel, then I really don't want to share that. Anyways, my time that morning was great, and this week has been an exercise in honesty :)

On the job front: nothing has turned up. It seems that my leaving in July is a little bit of a problem, which I did completely expect. But still, I had hope. But now it is slowly leaving me. Tomorrow will be follow-ups and maybe applying to some more places. I would even just love to babysit occasionally! But alas, even that seems to be a closed door. And yep, this is definitely an exercise in trust and I don't like it at all.

I have found that my neighborhood is a wonderful place to run. School is flat as anything, but where we live has some great little hills to run through. Granted, my calves are KILLING me after a run Tuesday and again today. But I am gulping the chocolate milk and pretending that it will help - any excuse to drink chocolate milk works for me! Unfortunately if I don't get a job I won't be joining the swim center for tri-training. I might try to start working in some biking, I just need to check out the family bikes and maybe give them a little tune-up. So for now it's just running, which is convenient because I have needed a lot of head-clearing already and running is perfect for that.

In other news, I went to the library yesterday and got two travel books on Europe and one book on how to pack!! Now to buy those train tickets!

Friendship

There's something exceptional about getting together with a long time friend. I woke up this morning to hang out with my nearest and dearest friend. Although we don't talk much while we are at school, we always seem to pick right back up as if we had seen each other last week. It brings me so much joy! We share a mutual love for coffee, so our get-togethers always include a good cup o' joe. And then we just talk for hours. So my summer has officially started off with a bang. Thanks liv :)

This afternoon I decided that I should get my rear in gear and go out job hunting. I applied to 4 places in about 3.5 hours before giving up. One place seemed really promising, but who knows. It would be wonderful to hear back before I have to get dressed up and go out again.

And tomorrow is running day! A friend is driving over early to run with me :) yay! So I am going to bed now.

Rocky Mountain National Park

Well first off, I CANNOT find anything that will get the pictures from my camera to my computer, so no pictures tonight. That probably makes me sound really technologically unsavvy. I really know my electronics, it's just hard to come home after 3 months and find things :)

So, I guess I'm up to Colorado day 2! We got up in the morning and I dropped her off at her office to meet people and then went and did her grocery shopping for her. I'm so nice, right? I actually just wanted to get the errands done so we could hit up the mountains! It ended up being cloudy and in the 40s on Friday. We went back and forth on whether or not we wanted to actually get out of the car and hike, so we decided to dress as warmly as we could for what we packed and decide later whether or not we would get out of the car. Well, before we even got to the park, it was snowing pretty hardcore.

Estes Park is this cute little town in the mountains just before the entrance to the park. It has a cute downtown with shops and a hotel and I guess people live there. We got out and walked around a little bit and went into almost every tourist T-shirt shop. You wouldn't believe the number of obvious dirty jokes are on Colorado tourist shirts. I was a little shocked, maybe I shouldn't have been. Then we headed into the park/mountains!! It was cold. Cold cold cold. So we decided to do all driving. We did get out at almost every pull-off to take pictures, but shivered and jumped back in the car. When we got to where the road finally closed off at the top, all we saw was a wall of white cloud. I guess it was cool, but we didn't get to see any mountains unfortunately. But it was still a great trip and we had a lot of fun.

As a side note, altitude sickness is real. By the time we got to the top of the park, I had a headache and my stomach was not feelin' so hot. It's so weird how that works. It didn't seem like we were climbing that high, but I guess we were. On the way back to the house we stopped by goodwill and the outlet mall. I found a few steals and I think Katelyn only bought a gift, but it was successful! We crammed everything I wanted to do into one day and still got home for dinner - steak!

Tomorrow starts the job hunt, that shall be not fun. And it's RAINING here so my ability to go running is non-existent. Worst timing ever - I have leftover school and travel stress I need to get rid of! But soon, when the weather co-operates, I'll start maybe logging my tri-training.

Colorado

I am home for the summer! What an adventure the last couple of days have been. I know I promised to write the other night, but I have not had access to internet for the last 3 days. So this is the first chance I have had to blog! I think I left off when we were in New Mexico, so there is a lot to write about. Thursday we got up to finish the drive to Colorado. We got to Colorado Springs by 11 AM. And talk about a beautiful city!! It was much smaller than I was expecting, but the mountains were breathtaking. Pike’s Peak was in the background and all snowy and pretty. The first thing we did was stop in Garden of the Gods. It’s a beautiful park with some amazing and huge rock formations. We mostly drove around, but did get out and walk part of one trail. My favorite part was seeing some rock climbers in action! Climbing Garden of the Gods is now officially on my bucket list – I’m thinking a trip after graduation. We also got to see the kissing camels but avoided any snake sightings (to Katelyn’s relief). After that we drove over to the headquarters of Focus on the Family to visit Whit’s End. If you didn’t grow up listening to Adventures in Odyssey (a kid’s radio program), then you probably won’t appreciate this. But Katelyn and I had a blast! We got to visit the soda shop and we both ordered a Wodfamchocsod. So delicious! It was really similar to a chocolate shake, but had a little bite from the club soda. We took pictures with Whit and Eugene, then headed for the 72 ft. slide. We were both just under the height limit, so we got to slide down probably the best slide ever. Super twisty and steep! Then we grabbed a burrito from Qdoba and hit the road to Denver. Katelyn has an internship just outside Denver for 6 weeks and has been blessed by our second cousins who are letting her stay with them! We got to their house late afternoon and met them and their 3 boys for the first time. Talk about the wonderful bonds of family! They took us out to dinner and we really enjoyed getting to know them. Since I flew out today, Friday was our big day to sight see in the Rocky Mountains. Not only did we have to go to Estes Park/Rocky Mountain State Park, but there was a huge goodwill and an outlet mall that we had to hit up! Is that enough of a cliff hanger? Okay, since I have so much to write and so many pics to post, I’ll leave off and finish up Colorado tomorrow. In the mean time, I am going to enjoy home and my bed! And my family of course :)

And uploading pics is going to take more time than I have tonight, so they will have to wait also!

Welcome Back!

Summer is here! I finished my last final on Monday and skipped town yesterday afternoon. I finally head home Saturday afternoon. At the moment I am on a road trip with the older sis. We are going to spend a couple days here in the Rockies - hopefully get a hiking trip in. And then home for most of the summer! I plan to blog a ton! I'll be tracking my triathlon training as well as my trip to Europe! I'll have more about the trip tomorrow!