The Great Pumpkin...

No words, just some awesome-ness in the form of pumpkins.  Have you guys carved any great pumpkins lately?  I'm loving my spiderweb, and Drew's IOWA pumpkin.  Go Hawks!

A work in progress...

For the love of patio refinishing, I tell ya!  Man, this thing has really been a project.  We started back in June or July with this purchase of a patio set in need of much love.  Since then it's been my job to take apart, sand, glue, sand, fill and ultimately stain.  Every.  Single.  Piece.  Yep - Brandy shall be named sander, and Drew shall be named part-time "taker-aparter".  You know, for when I can no longer feel my hands. 

And now that I have a full time job (no, not as a sander - though I should consider it) this project has taken on a new deadline.   The original deal was to have the whole thing done by the end of summer.  And that didn't happen - a few too many days of sniffing stain repeatedly will do that to you.  And now the deadline is to have the table sanded (all the other pieces are done) by late fall and then if we have a nice day in early winter that's warm enough we'll stain it.  For now we're pretty proud of it - of course the finale is really the table top.  And it's the hardest piece, of course!  Wanna check out our progress?

Fall always does this to me...

Well, I see that I haven't posted since September!  Whew - sorry about that.  Fall just does that to me...I want to be outside, enjoying, hiking, leaf-crunching, pumpkin picking, etc.  Anything but indoors - which often means I'm bad about updating.  And lots has happened since early September - from an unexpected trip back to Iowa, an expected trip to Georgia, a job offer/acceptance/start date, and our 2nd wedding anniversary.  So yeah...busy.

In mid-September we heard that Drew's uncle John passed away unexpectedly.  Drew and I made the decision to drive back for the service, and I'm thankful we were able to.  The love, support, singing, playing and reminiscing was just what everyone seemed to need - and it was great to remember John in that way and support the family.  On the way back to Colorado we drove into the most amazing sunset over the mountains- and Drew and I just looked at each other and thought, "That's John..."

We got back on a Saturday evening and I turned around and headed out to Georgia on Sunday morning.  I had already accepted a side project consulting for my old university, Life University, on their new Student Advocacy Center.  It was great to see everyone - and I enjoyed seeing a lot of the things that I had helped plan on paper find their way into real life on campus.  Very invigorating, and perfect timing for me to get a full time offer with a university in Denver.  Of course, that sort of thing only happens when life is running in high gear...right?  So when I got the call, and it was a good one - I accepted.  Thankfully they gave me a week off between my Life gig and a new start date.  So yeah, I'm the newest student advisor with Lincoln College of New England (no joke - they have a distance campus in Denver) and I'm pretty stoked about it.  I'll update you as I stumble my way through my first two weeks...  ;)

Finally, Drew and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary over the weekend.  Well, today is the actual anniversary - but in true romantic fashion Drew had to be out of town for work this week.  So not his fault...  We went golfing over the weekend, had some amazing morning fires in the fireplace, made crazy dinners and ran our traditional 5K.  Relaxing, right?  Well, yeah - up until that last part.  We love our tradition of running a 5K for our anniversary (no matter how much we grumble the morning of...) so it was all good.  I scored a killer nap on the floor with Loui afterwards, (pretty sure Drew has pictures) too, so it was a great day.

And yeah, that's fall so far.  Dig it!  Here are a few pictures (and I forgot, we went pumpkin picking, too!).  Enjoy!