August and most of September...MIA.

I have been absolutely missing from the blog world for almost 2 months. I figured I should update everyone on what I've been up to in these past two months..if I can remember. This is the cliff notes version of what's been going on but I think it will suffice for now.

1) At the end of July, I became completely swamped with work as I am now the lone person in my position at the firm I am with. The two other people at my position quit within weeks of each other. Needless to say, it got busy as all hell... and has yet to slow down. I'm not holding my breath.

2) Much of the free time we had in August we spent at the water... on the river, at Lake Washington, at Alki beach at the ocean. We swam a lot, we hiked a lot. One weekend we hiked a total of 25 miles in two days. And much of the "hiking" involved running up mountains... and running back down. Tim got me new "northwestern gear" including Keen shoes and a nalgene water bottle with a leak proof lid. And as proof that I am becoming even MORE of a northwestern girl, I am going camping for the first time this weekend in the mountains east of here and I bought more northwestern shoes... hiking shoes.

3) The middle of August was consumed by Tim wrapping up his intense anatomy class and me cramming for the CPA exam. I took off several days from work to completely focus but I still don't know if I passed or not. I am holding my breath on this one.

4) Did I mention that we got two kittens in June? Their names are Tyson and Calvin. They are the cutest and sweetest boys ever. I will post a picture someday soon. Tyson is a grey/blue cat and Calvin is black. They are getting pretty big now. I still miss Emerson and Berkeley so insanely much but I love Tyson and Calvin just as much.

5) At the end of August, over Labor Day weekend, we made the trek back to Kansas City. It was a short but busy weekend. We saw most of Kansas City as well as some of Iowa. It is amazing how much different Kansas City looks from Seattle. I never realized how flat it is out there (and in Phoenix, too) after living so close to mountains in Seattle. Tim was completely shocked at how cheap houses are out there... compared to here, anything is cheap though so I guess that's not really saying much! It was so good to see my family and some friends, though... I haven't been home in so long so it was much needed and so much fun.

6) Also towards the end of August we took several day trips to see Washington more. We drove east to Leavenworth, a little Bavarian town in the Cascade mountains and walked/hiked around there for a day. It was the craziest little village. You drive in to town and immediately feel like you are in Germany or something. It was bizarre. A couple of weekends ago, we took a ferry across the Puget sound and went to Bainbridge Island. Then we drove northwest towards the Olympic mountains with the ocean on one side of us, the mountains on the other. It was so beautiful. We took a ferry back to a different island and then drove up and around and back down to the Seattle area. We basically spent the whole day exploring the Puget sound area. I was completely in awe.

7) The past couple of weeks have been consumed with getting Tim ready to go off to Central Washington University. He is starting a program over there to become a medic. It is going to be one of the toughest and most intense years of his life but it will be worth it! The program one of the top programs in the country and they only accept 20 people a year so I'm pretty excited for him. The school is about an hour east of here- just over the mountains- and the town reminds me of Lamoni and Phoenix combined. Meaning, it looks like Phoenix but is small like Lamoni. It's very strange. It is weird to not have him over here.

8) I just found out that I have to have a root canal. LAME. It's on that freaking tooth I had to get fixed back in Iowa. The one that taught me the lesson to never skip going to the dentist again.

9) I'm loving fall here. I haven't seen an actual fall in a few years. So pretty.

10) I am in a fall fitness "whole body health" camp thing. I am not doing it to lose weight or anything, it was just something that sounded fun. I am doing it with my friend Emily and it is kicking both of our asses. We have conditioning classes three times a week where we do what seems like 500 push ups, run 500 miles, do 500 sprints, do 500 lunges, jump squats, alligator push ups (you don't even want to know) and get pushed physically harder than I've ever been pushed before. It's pretty intense but I LOVE the people doing it and really like their ideas on whole body health and fitness. It's been really fun so far. Even more fun for people who have been watching me attempt to walk in the past two weeks. I have never been so sore in my life, and like I said, Tim and I have been consistently running and hiking so it's not like I was that incredibly out of shape. It's pretty crazy.

I can't really think of anything else that happened or is happening... this is kind of the boring version of the past couple of months. Hopefully I'll start to get more consistent again at posting. That's the goal, anyway.