Hey There, Remember Me?

Hi, my name is Colleen, and I fell off the face of the Earth for a few weeks. Thanks for those of you who sent little notes and comments asking after us and ensuring we’re still alive.

Reader’s Digest Version:
Justin got home on day 19 of 17. Yes, those numbers are correct. He was delayed 2 days due to another blizzard–I think this was his fourth during that trip. By the time I got him at the airport, he had been traveling for nearly 30 hours, and he smelled like it (sorry honey, but you did. I love you!)
That was a Wednesday. I spent the next several days working and drowning in laundry. And I didn’t get a moose shirt. But I did get moose jammies and polar bear jammies, so I guess that’s alright.

all of us in our moose jammies

That Monday I drove down to Greensboro, NC, to attend training for work. It was great! I had a beautiful rainy/foggy drive down US-29 there, got to stay in a nice hotel, had someone else prepare my meals and clean up behind me, got to sleep without interruptions from the dogs, the snoring husband, or our early-rising 4-yr old. I got to spend a lot of time with 23 other colleagues that I had never met prior to this trip, we sat in an incredible class at the Center for Creative Leadership with three phenomenal instructors. I swear I learned more in those three intense days than I did in several of my college classes.
Each night after class, we’d take the shuttle bus back to the hotel, most of us would meet in the bar to chat, then convince the hotel to take us to an area restaurant for dinner (the hotel restaurant had lousy food…except breakfast…that was some good breakfast!). We’d get back around 9-ish and then some brave (read: crazy) souls would stay up longer in the bar while us old folks would head back to our rooms to crash until the next morning. I never got a chance to touch my laptop from Monday night until Friday morning…it was rather refreshing.
My ride home on Friday was gorgeous…sunny, 55 degrees, with fluffy clouds dotting the blue-topaz sky. I got to see all the mountains that were hiding in the clouds on my ride down. I wish I had a good reason to go driving down that way again soon because it was just so picturesque.

The weekend was equally busy since we had a birthday party and I still had a ton of laundry to work on.

I got back to work this Monday and was shown no mercy after my week away from the office…I got to work Monday night, tonight, and am scheduled to work tomorrow night as well. Hopefully next week will be a little quieter since the work I’m doing during the evenings all this week are essentially wrapping up two projects…so I think I’ll only be working one night a week for the next few weeks. After that, it seems I’ve got some upcoming projects that may mean more night work…just in time for Justin to go out of town again. *sigh* But I think after he’s done with this trip, we might be able to high-tail it out of here to visit my family to celebrate our goddaughter, Meghan’s, first birthday. We hope. I’m still crossing my fingers cuz it will be a very very tight and crazy itinerary to adhere to.

So now that all that crazy stuff is sort of done, I’m going to try to climb back onto the Blogging Wagon. Hopefully that includes getting back on the Blog-Reading Wagon cuz I miss all of you.