It always feels good to come home again. Especially after being gone for around 10 days, and 6 of those days were "for work." We left in early June to go to our niece's graduation in Texas. She graduated at 4pm (central), and due to work constraints, we couldn't take a flight out until 6a (mountain) of that day. Graduation went well, it always makes you proud to see someone accomplish that in their lifetime. Paul stayed through the weekend and came back on Monday.
I meanwhile, left Sunday morning (after being in Dallas for around 25 hours) for the LEAD experience. After the months of planning and preparing, the week has come and gone. The experience was incredible. I made 14 new friends, and was pleased to get to know some of the facilitators better through the week. I have to admit that I feel pretty inspired to do some good work around town and the office after going through that experience. Last' year's class labeled it as "life-changing" when they went. Whether that is/will be true for me remains to be seen. Ask me again in at least a year, then feel free to ask me again in increments of 5 years. I believe I learned about elements of myself I wanted to change which may have a positive impact in those around me. I look forward to getting back to the office to see what can be done.
Paul met me in Denver on Friday evening after the experience, and we spent the weekend in the Denver/Fort Collins area. It was a great weekend and I was incredibly happy to see my husband and puppy (he brought Clouie with him for a multitude of reasons...number one being that I missed the pup!) when he got into town. We went to Bass Pro Shops on Saturday morning and made our way up to Fort Collins. Turns out that Fort Collins is a very dog friendly location, so finding a hotel that let us have Clouie was not an issue, and we were actually able to stay our our favorite place. After watching the Mets game and taking a nap, we took the pup out to some pet stores so she could walk around, and then hit up a local sports grill for dinner. A dog park was right around the corner from us, but we never got a chance to take the pup there. Today we got up and went to IHOP for breakfast. They had their strawberry festival going on, and I tried their strawberry pancakes. Incredible. After breakfast, we went to a fly fishing shop for Paul, and then to Target for me. We left soon afterwards and got back a while ago.
It was a great weekend after a wonderful week. I feel very well rested and ready to get back to work. I can't wait to see what the next year brings with LEAD and am hoping for a lot of positive advancement in both my personal and professional life. Take care all.
