3 Smiles

Co-worker brought me breakfast one morning and the discovery of these killer $2 breakfast burritos from this place

Blood orange mimosas and fabulous food for my dad's birthday at a Highlands hot spot

A new wall of frames filled with photos from our favorite trips

Currently...

Reading:

What is the What by Dave Eggers - just finished!

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh - a friend recommended this one awhile ago and I finally got my hands on it and love it already!

I have a problem with reading several books at a time which, unfortunately, means sometimes I lose interest and focus and don't end up finishing some. But I am equally wrapped up in all of the above books right now, which is wonderful but time consuming.

Listening to: 

Rachel Platten - famous for her song 1,000 Ships but all of her songs are catchy and fun

Nelo - if you haven't heard of them, check them out! They're a small band from Austin, TX and their music is unique and incredible

Planning:

A hopefully delicious Mother's Day brunch for Sunday

Watching:

Nip/Tuck - a little ashamed, but the whole series is on Netflix and Felix and I are addicted

Tasmania

I am definitely all about Colorado when it comes to places to live and settle down in. But I am also a traveler and a huge advocate for living in many places during my life. Moving to North Carolina for school was one of the best decisions I have ever made, in addition to taking almost an entire year after graduation to travel. 

I have recently been, yet again, stung by the travel bug, and since I don't (yet) have any big trips planned in the near future (with the exception of our annual girl's trip to Arizona!), I decided to use my blog as an outlet to reminisce and recommend based on places I visited during my year of travels. 

(I'm going to try to post about one new location every few weeks, and they are in no relevant order)

First stop... Tasmania.

There are a TON of locations on my 'list of places I want to travel to,' and I can honestly say that Tasmania was not one of them. But after a super last minute planned week spent on the island, I am dying to go back one day.

We spent all of December 2010 in Australia, touring down the east coast and stopping whenever we felt like it. Once we were in Melbourne, Felix had the idea to fly down to Tasmania for a week. It was sort of like a "why not? we're only here once" kinda thing. 

After a 1-hour flight, we arrived at the tiny airport in Hobart, Tasmania with no plan. We found the cheapest rental car possible, and set off to the closest tourist center. We ended up doing a 3 day trek on Cradle Mountain, and a 2 day hike through Freycinet National Park. Both completely amazing and so different. Cradle mountain was an inclined, rough-terrain trail, scattered with tiger snakes and extreme hikers. We camped in a small clearing at a base camp and ate peanut butter sandwiches overlooking Mount Ida and Lake St. Clair.

Freycinet was far more touristy at first. The trail was packed with families and day hikers for the first 3 hours. We stopped for a quick lunch before making the final push to the 'campground' we had our eye on on the map. A few hours later, we were faced with...

It was breathtaking and 100% ours. We didn't see a soul our entire 2 days on the beach. We set our tent up in a small clearing just above the beach. Curious but bold wombats and wallabies ran around everywhere. Felix was the only one brave enough to dip into the Arctic waters; I was sore, tired and happy just laying on the beach and reading.

We stayed the next night in our car to save some money, and for our last night, we splurged on a room at an adorable Hostel in Hobart; we cooked pasta and took our first shower in 6 days. Before we flew out the next morning, we visited the charming Salamanca Street market and indulged in German sausages and hot tea. 

We managed to basically hit every major region of the island in our short week; but we didn't even make a dent in the endless trekking, rafting/kayaking trips, and biking the country offers. So if you're ever in the Southeast Aussie region and have at least a week to spare, I highly recommend visiting Tassie!

Let's try this again...

I know I know. I'm really not getting any better at writing on here. In fact, I'm getting worse. I let more and more time lapse between posts every month. It's not that I don't want to be writing. I actually think about blogging all the time. And the more I think about it, I get way overwhelmed because I think of how I'm NOT writing, and then I push it to the bottom of my lists of things to do.

Well today I'm not letting myself do that. I scribbled all over 'Saturday, May 5th' in my planner, reminding myself to write something, to write ANYTHING. The reminders are highlighted and underlined and I even made small threats to myself. Like if I don't publish a post today, I'm not allowed to do anything fun during my days off.

So here I am again, trying to be more consistent about posting, for myself. That's one thing I've noticed that has DRASTICALLY changed since I returned from Africa. I have very little intentional ME time. I have plenty of alone time - I go shopping, watch TV, and go on runs by myself - but I can't remember the last time I took a cup of coffee on our porch and wrote, or read, or just sat with myself for an hour. Those were some of my most precious moments in Uganda, and I haven't made any effort at creating time like that since I've been home.

Beautiful, new art hung at work

Not to make any excuses, because everyone should always be able to find time to themselves, but work has been wonderfully consuming a lot of my time. I had 2 very close friends at work get into an awful car accident last month. They are both okay, thank goodness, but one of my overnight co-workers will be out of work until middle of July. So, there have been plenty of opportunities for overtime. It has been a joy spending more time with the kids, and my bank account is happy, too. I am also teaching a reading class to our kiddos on Tuesdays; we're currently reading 'What is the What?', a book about the Lost Boys and war in Sudan. Anything Africa is right up my alley, so I've been having a lot of fun with that.

April sort of feels like a lost month, since it flew by so quickly. We had a wonderful Easter celebration at my parent's house, we made a trip to Florida and spent time with almost all of Felix's family, and we did a massive spring cleaning in the apartment. We are happy to welcome May, with it's flawless weather and abundance of miller moths. 

A non-traditional crab leg, shrimp, and potato broil for Easter brunch

My plans to return to Uganda this summer are slowly disappearing due to finances and timing, but my heart is just as much there as it always was. Felix is SO CLOSE to graduation he can taste it! Pinterest and obsessing over beautiful blogs takes up far too much of my time. And I'm still not sick of getting to see the sunrise every morning at work.

There are lots of exciting changes coming up in our lives, so keep reading, and I promise to keep writing!