I'm HERE!

So, I'm not a good blogger.  As evident through the lack of blog updates.  Anyway, a LOT has happened in the last two months!

Married!
The wedding was fantastic and wonderful. It was such a meaningful day and hard to summarize in words.  Certainly unforgettable, full of love, and the best day(s) of my life! Hopefully we will be getting our photos soon.

Packed out and moved to DC!
So we survived our first packout.  It was a two-day affair.  The first day involving the moving company coming to our house and packing everything in boxes. It was a bit of a learning experience as we found out that even if you sort your stuff into piles and think they will logically pack like items with each other, they will grab anything that fits.  Thankfully, we plan on brining all the boxes to post, but I imagine if we accumulate more stuff (hopefully not) we would need to be a little more discerning.  The next day, they loaded up the truck and moved everything out!  We left Tony with some bare essentials to survive for the next month - like a bed and some kitchen items, but otherwise, we moved almost everything.  It'll be a few months before we see some of it, and probably a few years (decades?) before we see some other items.

Then I drove to DC!  Dad flew into Denver and I met him at the airport with the car loaded and ready to go.  We spent the first day driving from Denver to Lawrence, KS.  The first day is a bit exhausting as there is a lot of flat ground between the two places.  Eastern Colorado gets very flat and there is not a lot of variety. However, there are some exciting wind farms along the way.  As you get closer to Western Kansas, the terrain does start to vary and gets to be much more interesting.  Kansas sunsets are also quite beautiful!

The next day we drove from Lawrence to Bowling Green, KY.  Missouri was quite beautiful- it was very green and we started to see a lot of flora along the highways, including a lot of Eastern Redbuds:


Missouri was also the state with the most highway patrol that we saw during the trip! We pulled into Bowling Green and checked into our hotel and them met up with Krista and Chris for dinner.  We went to a nice restaurant in downtown Bowling Green, which is a large open plaza.  We then walked around a bit and went to Chris' bar, which is the tiniest bar in Bowling Green.  It was great to see Krista and meet Chris!  Hopefully we'll be back to visit again soon.

We had intended to make the last leg in one day, but decided that we didn't want to spend 12 hours in the car, so our next day we made it from Bowling Green to Roanoke.  This took us through Tennessee. Google Maps put us on a great winding country road which was breathtaking.  And finally our last day we made it to DC.  We spent the road trip chatting, listening to epic road trip playlists on Spotify and also listening to The Martian on Audible.  It was a great book!  I haven't seen the movie but will have to put it on my list. When we got to DC, we stayed with Danny in his apartment and we had some great BBQ flank steak- it was delish!

Training!
So that brings us to today- we just finished our second week of the Foreign Service Specialist Orientation class and we are only one week away from getting sworn in! Time is flying and orientation really is like standing in front of a firehose of information.  We have a variety of sessions each day with speakers ranging from our orientation coordinators to ambassadors. It's been a great introduction to life in the FS. We had a great off-site field trip to West Virginia, which was combined with the Generalists A-100 class.  A-100 is the name of the orientation for the Generalists (Officers) for those who may not know.  It was a great way to focus on the fact that we are all colleagues and working toward one mission as one team. Sometimes it seems there can be some stratification between Generalists, Specialists, and Local Staff, so it is really inspiring to see the Orientation staff try and instill this "One team" mindset to incoming employees.

We turned in our bid lists last week and will find out where we're heading on Tuesday!  The bid-list was a bit of a shock, but I'm hopeful that I'll get one of my high choices!  I'll post more on Tuesday, including where were headed!

Anyway, I need to get back to some homework - I'm still finishing up my semester of grad school.  I'll be ready for the semester to be over!!

Life is moving fast!

Another week down and I can't believe that I'll be leaving Denver in less than 8 weeks!  So much is happening and it's all fantastic, and crazy, and stressful.

Last weekend, we visited Chris and Leanne in Tulsa.  This was my second time to Oklahoma- our last time being for the Gentlemen of the Road Tour that Mumford and Sons did in Guthrie two or three years ago.  It was great to see Chris and Leanne!  They live right downtown. It's a small city- easy to walk around almost everywhere downtown. We spent the weekend together and explored the city, ate some great food, toured some nice bars, and went to a concert- the Oh Hellos!  Tulsa has a lot of potential- which is weird to say for a town that has boomed and busted, but I think that Chris and Leanne are really enjoying it.

On the wedding front, we had some caterer tastings this week and we decided on a caterer today.  It is great to get that checked off the list- we will be having a brunch reception and I am really excited about our menu!  We need to work on the content of the ceremony this weekend and decide on some readings and what not.

Work is good- just had my annual review.  It's a bit bittersweet to leave CU after only one year, but I feel that I made the most of it and jumped in.  I have loved the work and it was a welcome development opportunity after leaving IIE, but I'm counting down the days until I leave.  Not because I dislike it, I'm just eager to move on to the next step!

School- oy vey. I absolutely love what I'm learning, but taking six credits this semester was a bit cray.  We'll see if I survive.  I need to make sure that I can get far enough ahead so that I have most of my coursework done by the time training starts in April.