Song of the South

Hello!

After 4 years of not blogging at all, I've decided to update, mostly because I wont be working this summer and will be over 1000 miles away from a good chunk of my family. Since leaving London I had that nasty cyst removed, met the man of my dreams, got a dog, graduated college, got married and moved to Georgia! Talk about adventure.

First things first: I met Travis about 4 months after leaving London, although the first time I met him at a movie theater with a group of friends, neither of us had any idea where we'd be 3 1/2 years later.

Shortly after meeting Travis, and still not even dating him I got a puppy and named her Camden after one of my favorite areas of London

This little punk will be 4 years old this summer, and she seems to have no intention of ever changing. her favorite things in the world, after her mom, are peanut butter and frisbee.

Both Camden and Travis helped with my last few years of school and I finished my bachelors of science in Biology in the spring of 2014 and got a part time job doing grunt work in a lab, not entirely sure where I was headed next career wise.

After dating for a year, Travis proposed at the Continental Divide outside of Winter Park, CO. Our engagement lasted for just under a year and we were married in Ken Caryl, CO June 8, 2014.

We honeymooned in Napa Valley, drinking lots of wine and checking out San Francisco for a couple days. Then both Travis and I found jobs just outside of Denver, but still a good 30 minutes away from both our parents. It was a good distance. We still saw them very often and it wasn't too hard to drop in for Dinner, but far enough away that no one was likely to drop in on the newlyweds unannounced. Travis graduated with his mechanical engineering degree December 2014 and after working for about a year for a biomedical company was awarded for all his hard work and diligence a job for a very prestigious company that does a lot of government contract work. It's pretty secretive but I think he's going to love it. The job requires him to be always learning and working on new and different projects, which is good because he loves variety. I don't think I've ever seen him order the same thing at a restaurant twice. 

The caveat to this perfect job? It was just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, just over 1000 miles from our home in Denver. Which was actually really great! We both love to travel and couldn't wait to experience life more than an hour away from being able to call our parents if something went wrong, the ultimate test of our marriage. We were excited and a little bit anxious. Two weeks ago we packed up our new SUV and a uhaul trailer and began our drive across the country. On the first day of June we found ourselves at a hotel in Atlanta waiting to be able to get into our rental house... oh and talking to some police officers because our car had been broken into. Several thousand dollars worth of our stuff had been stolen and two windows of the car had been smashed to bits. It was quite the "Welcome to Atlanta! And eff you too" but with lots of love and support from our family 1000 miles away we were able to replace some of our possessions and get excited about moving into our new place. Which, if I'm being honest, sucks when you have nothing to put in your living room. Literally nothing. We had sold our living room furniture before we left and the thieves took most of our electronics. An empty brand new living room looks really depressing and is hard to accept as home. Now we both realize that these were just earthly possessions and there was only one irreplaceable piece stolen, but it was  hard to start a new life in a new place with something like that hanging over our heads, especially when you can't just plop down to watch TV or play computer games to relax. Luckily we bought a new couch and TV and it's starting to feel more like home.  

This weekend we will embark on a long journey to pick up our dogs. Yes, dogs, Camden is getting a sister! 

It'll be a pretty exciting summer. And what am I doing when the summer is over? Starting graduate school of course! 

I was accepted to CU's Master's Public Health program before Travis was offered the job in Georgia. Although it's going to be hard I'm planning on heading back to Denver in the fall to start classes for my master's degree. That is, if I don't get into a school in Georgia. We'll see though! Life is an adventure, and I think I've got just the pants for that.