Happy New Year to one and all! It's the end of the month and it sure has been a busy one. We rang in the New Year with some good friends from BYU who recently moved out our way. We played Yahtzee and Bang! and ate snacks and drank Martinelli's like we are wont to do. It was a fun night.
Getting back into the swing of work wasn't as much fun. As you know, I work in a fitness center which is essentially the hottest place in town at the beginning of the year so we were busier than ever with New Year's Resolution hopefuls. And of course the other side of things is I work at the House of Representatives and it's a new congress this year as well so there were plenty of new staffers joining the gym. Needless to say, we've been busy. Then to add to the new year rush, school started back up and I'm at a new campus this semester (community college means lots of campus options which is great) so I've been learning the buildings and parking situation. Best part, it's 15 minutes from our apartment so even though I have a class at 7-9:40pm on Monday nights, I get home by 10!
Not only did school start but something else even more exciting (I'm being completely serious). My physical therapy volunteering! I'm honestly so happy! I love every minute I'm there working with the therapist, seeing her patients and learning more about this world I will be entering. I volunteer with a woman I play soccer with who just opened her own clinic. She's been a PT for about 18 years and decided she was done working for the man so she took the plunge and opened her own practice and business is doing great! There is never a lull and it gets busier every week I go in. I'm only going 3-4 hours a week but I really wish I could go more. I love it! I'm so blessed to be in a place where I can chase and follow my dreams and I'm so happy I've found what my life's passion is (as Scott put it). It's all going very well.
So with all that work and school you'd think we wouldn't have any fun this month, right? Wrong! We were able to get away for MLK Weekend to West Virginia for a little hiking and winter camping. It was my first winter camping experience and the whole time I thought how glad I was that I married an Eagle Scout because he knew exactly what to pack, how to pack it and build a fire even when the wood was wet and the wind relentless. We were in George Washington National Forest right along the West Virginia-Virginia border. Our original plan was to arrive Saturday morning and hike until evening, all day Sunday and half of Monday and get home that afternoon/evening with about 19 miles under our belts. That plan quickly changed after we literally hiked 1 mile per hour for the first two miles. It was a brutal uphill battle with heavy packs on our backs. We went 5.5 miles the first day.
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| Right at the start, fresh and ready to go! |
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| Part of an abandoned airway beacon built in 1940 |
In the morning after maybe a few hours sleep (we "slept" for about 10 hours but we didn't really sleep-very cold and windy) we packed up camp and headed for our real destination, Big Schloss (German for castle), which is a great rock structure with a fantastic overlook. We made it there in about 2 hours, hiking much faster now that we were on relatively flat stretches.
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The rocks behind us is Big Schloss
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It was there we decided to forego our original round-trip plan and just go back the way we came and end early. Both happier with the knowledge of the pitfalls ahead of us since we'd been that way already, we headed back. We got about half a mile from our car by 4:30pm and wanted to camp one more night. I pitched the tent and Scott started the fire and it was roaring which was wonderful and welcome. After a tasty tin-foil dinner and dessert of cinnamon apples, we called it a night.
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| Camp, night two with our tin foil dinners cooking |
By morning we were ready to clear out and head home. We cleaned up camp and by 8:30 we were on the road for home. We hit the showers at 10:30 and felt amazing afterward. The rest of the holiday was spent relaxing in our apartment eating junk food. We'd just hiked a total of 16 miles!
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| At the end of the trail looking tired but accomplished |
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| The run we camped by and followed on our hike |
And to round out the month, our car hit a major mile stone. 100,000 miles! We've had our KIA for 5 years and it's been great to us. Just replaced the brakes and it still looks beautiful. Here's to another 5 years with our little car!
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| It happened on my way to Psychology. Very exciting |
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