Rocky Mountains part deux

We leave on Thursday for another Rocky Mountain adventure. This time we're staying in country, heading to Breckenridge for a week in a beautiful house with the Roberts family. Emily, Luke, Susie, and John have been up there since this past weekend, and Jeff Lydecker and Matt and I join them for the second week on Friday. Matt and I are driving, and we are going to use all our new camping equipment at Sugarite Canyon State Park in New Mexico on the Colorado border. Then we'll have a nice little car ride into Breckenridge on Friday. So we'll hang at the house for at least a week, and then we'll either leave either the next Friday or Saturday with plans to camp sometime on the road or just drive it all in one day. We're really looking forward to hiking, fishing, and hopefully whitewater rafting! With all of us there, we should have an entire raft to ourselves! In case anyone is concerned, Piper is spending the week with Grampa Hall - he's going to spoil her rotten, I just know it!

Oh, and couple random things. I forgot to mention in my last post another one of my recent activities. I went to the Fort Worth Zoo on July 11 with Malaika, Jennifer, and Sarpong's 2-year-old daughter Abigail. Jen wanted to go for her birthday, so Malaika and I fought off our overnight-induced sleepiness and accompanied her. It was really fun - highlights included the reptile house, tigers, hippos, elephants, and primates. It was also fun being there with a young (well-behaved) child - we could be as goofy as we wanted gawking at the animals and could attribute it to doing it all for Abigail. I hadn't been to that zoo in a really long time, if ever, so that was neat too. Second random thing: if you haven't looked at them yet, Leslie has some fun wedding week pictures on overt's gallery [here].

A Friday Post

It is Friday. I think I was compelled to write a post because of this picture that Matt just sent me. Pretty funny :)

So I haven't been blogging much. I just got overwhelmed with all the major events that happened. I wanted to post about them, but at the same time, how on earth could I capture the wedding and honeymoon wonderfulness in a blog post? And therefore...nothing. I did put pictures up on our spiffy new overt spot, which I think captures the honeymoon really well. And I did post a link to the wedding pictures, so I think I'm just going to press on from there. If my readers want more details, I'm like phone calls and e-mails, so I'd be happy to tell more stories through those channels. Oh! Also, speaking of roberts.overt.org, I put three little videos of Piper up in the Piper Picture album, and they are very cute!

What have I been up to since we got back from the honeymoon? We got back on the night of June 26. We gave a slideshow of our pictures and narrated for our families. The next day, Matt took off work and we did a ton of shopping and organizing at the apartment. We had a lot of presents to sort through, and I was identifying things we still needed for the apartment. Tuesday-Thursday Matt had to work, and I played housewife. Mostly I tried to organize, write thank-you notes, grocery shop, and move more things from my house to the apartment. Matt had a four-day weekend for the 4th of July, and we spent that weekend relaxing. We didn't even leave the apartment on Saturday. That Sunday was my first day back at work. It was really fun getting to talk about the wedding with my work friends that had been able to come. Unfortunately, it was a crazy day at work. Really insane. It was a hard thing to come back to, but...crazy days at work can still be fun. I got to experience my first post-overnight sleep at the apartment, and that went well. Piper was nice and let me sleep, too, I think until past 3pm! Matt had been at the Park Cities parade when I got home from work, but he was nice too and watched TV quietly while I continued resting. The rest of that week was uneventful. At some point, I had a fun day with Mom where we bought fabric for curtains and ate lunch with Dad at Amore.

Last Saturday, Matt and I got up early to drive out to Plano to the house of one of his work friends, Kacie. We were joined at 9:45am by another friend of Matt's, Nick, and we proceeded to watch all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings DVDs back-to-back. It was actually really fun - with breaks for food (Kacie made Kraft macaroni & cheese for lunch and it was yummy), it took almost 12 hours. Kacie and I worked on a LOTR puzzle during The Two Towers. None of us had seen The Return of the King extended edition yet, so that was something we were looking forward to during the day as well. And it was great - I love all the new and extended scenes! It was also the longest...we were so tired at the end of the day! And all we'd done was sit on the couch! It was really cool to watch all three in a row because it was just like watching one really long amazing movie.

Last Sunday at work was much more sedate. We each had 3-4 cases, which is really nice. The only weird thing was that three pets did not get picked up by the time we closed in the morning. That's really awful for them, because all the trained staff leaves at 8am. The animals have to sit in their cage, without medication, fluids, food, or being cleaned up after, until their owners come and get them (from our bookkeeper who works during the day). So if there is a medical emergency...too bad. I think everyone got picked up sooner or later, though.

Another thing that's been going on in my life is work scheduling. Nine days ago I was supposed to talk with my boss about coming on full time and what a potential schedule for that would be. Two technicians are leaving in August so it seemed like a good time to be adding hours. Well, the first time I called the schedule wasn't done, so we were going to talk at work on Sunday. Then it still wasn't done, so I was supposed to call on Wednesday. Finally, he called me on Wednesday night and told me what my schedule could me, and goodness gracious, it is the worst schedule I could imagine. When you read it, just keep in mind that Matt works 8-5 Monday-Friday. Here it is:

Sunday 6pm - Monday 8am
Monday 6pm - midnight
Friday 6pm - midnight
Saturday noon - midnight

Um, yeah, I don't think that'd be a great way to spend our first year of marriage. So that really sucks, because going full time at the clinic is what I want to do this next year. But it just doesn't look like it's going to happen. Right now Dad and I have discussed me doing something at the restaurants that would let me keep my current shift at the clinic (Sunday 6pm - Monday 8am).

And finally, the only other thing I think bears reporting is the play date that Piper had on Tuesday with Malaika's kitties Shango and Eshu (they are brothers). She'd gone over to their place once and all she did was sit on the futon and hiss. But this was her second time seeing them and this time it was on her turf. We were hoping it'd be better. Ha! Wrong. She just sat around the table and hissed (and attacked if they got too close). So they made themselves at home in the other 2/3 of the main room and were wonderful little cats (while Piper kept an eye on them and hissed a lot). Eshu liked the spot in front of the fireplace and Shango liked the floor by the door. Piper hissed when she sniffed by the fireplace for two days afterwards! And because Shango got into her carrier, I had to wash her towel and it was also two days before she didn't think there was a cat hiding in there. But Malaika and I don't want to give up, because our cats need to be socialized. It may just be that Piper's a lost cause.

Wedding Album

Our wedding pictures are viewable online at http://www.hallrobertswedding.weddingherald.com/

They are pretty cool :)

We got the desk set up today and my computer is happily ensconced - I think this is a good sign that I'll be able to get my wedding and honeymoon tales up sometime this weekend.

Pictures are up!

All of our honeymoon pictures are up! (http://roberts.overt.org) Now, time for bed :)

(thanks again Bryan!)

roberts.overt.org

Loyal readers: I bring tidings of good news! Thanks to Bryan, Matt and I now have our own gallery, located at http://roberts.overt.org, where we will be able to post our pictures! Our first album will be, of course, the honeymoon, which I'm working on as I post this. Now that I have my computer set up, I'll try and make the time to post my wedding and honeymoon stories and thoughts. But the apartment is still such a mess and there are so many things to do that I'm not sure when I'll get around to it. Maybe one part at a time. :)