As much as 2014 was a year of change, this brought the roller coaster of emotions one might expect with many events of change. So many goodbyes and new beginnings, so many let downs and triumphs, so many highs and lows. It’s difficult for me to categorize the year at all.

I foresee 2015 as another year of change–but really, is there any other kind? More importantly, should there be any other kind?

Even though this is later into 2015 than I had originally planned, it just wouldn’t feel right not to bid farewell to all of my favorite moments of 2014. What a year it was! Enjoy my best of 2014 (in no particular order).

See the Best of 2013 here.

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It’s almost TIME!

ELEVEN days until I leave the lovely mountain town of Bozeman and move to DEEEEEEENVER, Colorado!

Very exciting.

The only part is, I am leaving a life behind. I’m sure there are only good things ahead of me, but goodbyes are hard.  Like I’ve heard many say, a goodbye is a very poorly named ritual…is therereally anything good about it? Except the excitement of a new open door?

One good thing, besides all of the wonderful well wishes, is the advice I’ve been getting. Some of it isn’t so good, some of it is weird (although “always floss” is probably something I really should listen to) and one particular piece has really stuck with me, from a most unlikely source.

One of the cooks I work with a lot at the nursing home is in her mid-thirties, with several kids and several divorces under her belt. She’s smart and capable, but as she’s from rural West Virginia, she isn’t very educated. Yet, out of nowhere, she’s quite educated on life: the only thing she said to me by way of goodbye was “Do good in Colorado.”

“Do. Good.”

So simple, and for some reason it really just stuck with me. It’s all I’ve been thinking about.

I guess that, when it comes down to it, that’s what I want to do with my life. Sure, I want to be happy, and see the world, find a career (or careers) that I adore, make a home on the coast, surround myself with loved ones.

But under it all? I want to do good.

I may be stressed about the move (i.e. stressed about the sheer amount of packing I still need to do) and nervous about my job and slightly freaked out by moving in with a boy. I’ve been worried about what I am getting out of my life, what I want out of it, what’s going to happen when I’m older, how short and unpredictable life is.

Among all these worries, I forgot that the root of the human experience is tied to our interactions with humans, all lifeforms, and as a result, it is tied to our relationship with the planet and the entire universe, and our treatment of all of this.

So thanks, random cook, for reminding me that life really doesn’t have to be as complicated as I make it.

And that if you let yourself listen to the people around you, sometimes the most random sources can make it all startlingly clear.

Thanks for indulging this little blast from the past. It is Treat YoSelf Thursday, after all! 

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Snapshots and Snippets is a series I try to do about once a month, showcasing some of my Instagram travel photos and giving you a brief glimpse into the country/state/city/town of choice! 

TODAY is my last full day in Colorado. We drive out tomorrow for two weeks in Montana and two weeks in Seattle, from where we’ll fly to Prague on August 2! I still can’t believe how soon we leave.

Sadly my last day here isn’t full of my favorite Colorado things, but these past few weeks have been chock-full of friends, food, sunsets, and a few too many goodbyes.  Instead, I am frantically packing and donating everything we have left that didn’t sell. I’m obviously really frantic as I leisurely write this post…but that will happen.

I will miss Colorado. It’s a beautiful state, but most of all, I will miss the wonderful people we’ve met here (and our perfect little apartment). We have spent a solid three years here (well, just under three if you want to get technical) and my life is moving in directions I would have imagined when I first arrived.

I moved to Colorado, the Denver area specifically, from my hometown of Bozeman, Montana. There was an adjustment period, as E and I moved in together for the first time, I was permanently moving away from my hometown for the first time, and I started my AmeriCorps position, which was a year of ups and downs. I started graduate school right after completing AmeriCorps, which felt like a giant blur, and decided to move overseas while living here.

I didn’t love Colorado right away, and there is a part of me that doesn’t think we will ever move back here, at least not permanently.

I think the moment I moved here I sensed that it wouldn’t be a permanent home for us, but I have loved living here. I’ve loved my friends, the people, the experiences we’ve gained. I’ve loved our Colorado road trips, our camping excursions, the ski days, the cabin weekends. Even if I don’t move back here, I will be back to visit, someday! And sadly I wasn’t able to complete my Colorado Wish List, so we definitely need to come back for that!

I hope you indulge me as I share my favorite Instagrams from this great state! (I should probably have an entire post dedicated to just Colorado sunsets…just to warn you!)

Lots of love, Colorado! We’ll miss you. XOXO.

Linking up with Skimbaco Lifestyle!

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This was further corroborated when E’s parents and then my sister visited Mesa Verde. I love archaeology and ancient sites (such as Angkor Wat, the Great Wall or Macchu Picchu) and I knew I would love to see these ancient cities and buildings built into the side of cliffs. Mesa Verde is a national park dedicated to the ancient cliff dwelling of the Ancestral Pueblo (when I learned about them in school they were called the Anasazi). The Ancestral Pueblo lived in Mesa Verde until around the 1300s, when they inexplicably abandoned their cliff dwellings and the entire area over the space of about 100 years. No one knows why they left, but it is thought they all migrated south to New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and even Mexico. (Read more of the history here).

We were able to camp for one night in Mesa Verde on the way back from our Grand Canyon trip, as the park is in Southwestern Colorado…sort of on our way home! We made it work, at least. The trip is about 8 hours from Denver, and the park has camping and some rooms at a lodge in the middle of the park.

We arrived late in the afternoon, and left the next day around noon. I would have loved to spend more time there, but, in our usual fashion, we were able to squeeze in quite a bit in less than 24 hours.

Here are a few of my favorite parts of Mesa Verde!

1. Driving into the park and seeing the vistas.

2. The helpful visitor’s center right before entering the park.

3. The short hike down to Spruce Tree House. Spruce Tree House is easily one of the most visited cliff dwellings in the park, as it is just a short walk down from the museum (which we didn’t have time to visit).

^^Spruce Tree House from the trail above.

4. Driving Mesa Top Loop Road. Along this road, there are several stops to view cliff dwellings from above or across the canyon, as well as buildings that hold excavations of other types of dwellings. Since we arrived in Mesa Verde fairly late in the day, we drove this road just before sunset (when the road closes). I loved visiting during this time, because the light was gorgeous and there was only two or three other people around!

^^Cliff Palace from across the canyon at Sun Point Overlook.

  ^^Square Tower House Overlook. Even the archaeologists have to rappel down to work on this dwelling…cool, right?

5. A tour of Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in North America. This tour was extra money as you can only take a guided tour, but it was worth it! We went on the first tour in the morning, as it gets pretty toasty down there in the day.

6. Going down into a kiva. This is an underground dwelling that is considered to be a living space, complete with a hearth. It is a completely covered, circular hole in the ground, which can only be accessed by a ladder in the middle of the ceiling!

7. Finding the cliff paths used by the ancient peoples who lived in the dwellings. They had their farms on top of the mesas and had to climb down the cliffs to their houses.

^^we got a ladder…the actual cliff dwellers had to climb up the rock!

8. The mystery of Mesa Verde. I was fascinated by the fact that the cliff dwellings were abandoned for no reason. While there are a lot of theories, from drought to aliens to war, no one really knows why they left…and we might never know.

9. Our campsite.

10. Ice cream and coffee at the Far View Terrace.

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Well, almost everything.

My parents came down for my graduation and we filled their truck with some of our possessions we will store with them while we’re away. We will also be filling our car with the last few things we want to keep and driving it to Seattle in a few weeks, to store with E’s parents.

Everything else, pretty much the rest of our stuff, we are giving away or selling.

It’s surprisingly difficult to dismantle our apartment and sort through it all, debating and deciding. I’m terrible at making decisions, and the fact that our parents don’t want to store that much, nor do they have the space, and we can only take two bags (plus carry-ons) each, I need to be fairly ruthless and quick about these decisions.

Even the things that I get to keep but that are now in storage are hard for me to pack up and send off. I’m not sure when I’ll see them again, or if I want to, or what my life will be like when I finally take those things out of their boxes.

I never considered myself that materialistic (except for my small shopping addiction), but living in a place for two years, you tend to accumulate a lot.

E and I moved in together when we moved to Colorado, so many of these things represent the beginning of this new phase of our relationship, and all of the nerves and anticipation that go along with that. We love living together, but it’s different from it was in those first weeks, when it was all possibility and attempting to mesh our individual styles into something we both liked.

I participated fully in the collecting, decorating, and purchasing of all of these things (except for that gigantic television), and here we are, putting it all in boxes, putting it up for sale, stuffing it in bags to be donated.

While it feels good to purge everything, I also feel sad and guilty to be doing all of this. What does it mean that we decided to give up this life so easily? I suppose it wasn’t necessarily easy, but it seemed like a no-brainer at the time for me.

I’ve always loved travel, and I’ve always wanted to live abroad, so I knew I (we) couldn’t turn down this opportunity.

With this opportunity, though, I can’t shake the feeling that I casually decided to throw out our carefully considered and curated life.

Sure, all of this stuff is made of just things, but these things made up our life. The tiny blue ramekins, that I only used several times, were the first items for our kitchen that I received. The red ladder-shelf, made for us by E’s parents, was carefully decorated every holiday. The dish towels I collected represented every season and I always loved bringing out the new ones. The art was collected from my travels, or our travels, and accumulated in my parents’ basement long before I ever knew where I would be moving and if E and I would move in together. The bar stools were hemmed and hawed over until we finally pulled the trigger, and we must have sat on a million couches before picking the perfect one, a giant brown suede one, complete with a chaise lounge. We spent many hours bonding and working on this couch, taking naps, cuddling. E spent the night on the couch after his wisdom teeth surgery while I slept next to him on the floor. Many of our family and friends have slept on this couch, especially after the hole in our blow-up mattress developed. We’ve found a place for our postcard collection and found our unique decorating style (it incorporates a lot of maps…).

All of these things remind me that we have really made a life here in Colorado. Often, I’ve felt swallowed by school here, or isolated from the city since we live so far south, near E’s job. I had a tough AmeriCorps year when we first got here, filled with way too many hours of work and worry, and I missed having mountains right out my back yard and I missed everything green. Yet we’ve made many memories, we’ve found a path near us that leads to a tiny waterfall, we’ve had three annual holiday potlucks and countless dinner parties, we’ve had friends and relatives stay and comment how much they love our apartment, and we’ve decorated our shower with bath crayons (and our friends have decorated it, too!). We’ve thrown a baby shower and a bachelorette party and a welcome-back party. We’ve had two just-the-two-of-us Christmases and two Easters together here and one Thanksgiving for friends. We’ve cooked many meals in the kitchen, grilled many things on our tiny porch, had a lot of laughs and fights in the living room, had lots of late-night talks in the bedroom. We’ve watched countless TV shows, researched countless places to visit, watched countless sunsets from our little balcony. I’ve discovered my love of having fresh flowers and how candles can make a little apartment seem even cozier and can soothe my wish to have a fireplace.

We’ve had a life here, and it’s taken packing it all away to remind me of this. To remind me that even though we’re going towards a new direction that’s always been a dream of mine, I shouldn’t leave this life behind casually. This life formed our relationship, helped me make other dreams come true, made us connections with so many great people, let me experience a new city and state. This was real life, even though this life also felt like we were waiting for the next phase to begin. It’s so exciting that it’s so close, now, but sometimes I wonder why it seemed so easy to give it all up for this next phase.

As we pack everything up, I’m grateful for this phase, a phase that often felt like transition as we figured out what we really wanted from ourselves and each other. I moved away from my hometown for the first time ever, and moved in with a boyfriend. I’ve learned what I want in a home, a few things that I want out of life, and E and I have started to make a life together. I’ve learned that while I love this little apartment and everything it has meant to us, and will always mean, I am so ready for the next adventure. It’s bittersweet to say farewell to our things (and will be just straight-up sad to say goodbye to the people), but I also can’t wait to see what happens next.

        ^^we’ll miss you number 202!

Linking up with Shanna!

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Since I last blogged…

I’ve learned that while I adore puppies, I am certainly not ready to have one full-time.

I’ve scrambled to finish school….

And I have successfully finished school and I am now an official Master’s! (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I threw a baby shower and dug a baby picture of myself out of the woodwork for a guessing game…nobody had any problem knowing this was me.

I finally found some tulips which has been way too hard in Colorado this year!

I went to my first professional soccer game.

I’ve been to the Grand Canyon.

I’ve been to Mesa Verde National Park.

I’ve spent way too many hours in the car…

But I’ve seen some gorgeous views!

I’ve said farewell to a few friends.

I’ve packed up most of my house, said goodbye to some of my favorite things, and put up my well-worn car, Grimace, up for sale.

I’ve run on very little sleep.

I’ve seen so many tiny bunnies! Springtime!

I’ve stood in four states at once.

I’ve enjoyed one of the last incredible sunsets from our apartment…we move out in three weeks!

And I learned that this is real life:

Linking up for Daily Diaries with Diaries of an Essex Girl!

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Which, let’s face it, are some of my favorite things.

But, today, to take a break from all the travel-talk, I thought I’d give you a quick update on what’s been going on behind-the-scenes!

NOWADAYS…

…we are going through all of our stuff. Where did it all come from? I guess I’ve sort of been collecting it my entire life…but it’s alarming how much we’ve added to said collection in the 2 1/2 years we’ve lived in Colorado together. Plus, a lot of it is harder to give up than I would have thought…like random (yet adorable) tiny ramekins that were a gift. My sister is just borrowing them until we come back (if ever!) but still, it made our impending move that much closer, and therefore more terrifying.

…I’ve started binge-watching 30 Rock (yes, years behind everyone else…that’s how I roll). It’s seriously harming my productivity.

…I finished my taxes in the nick of time! How did April 15 sneak up so fast? I got a big ole note of congratulations because not only do I not owe anything, I also didn’t get anything back, which is apparently “good tax planning.”

…I now officially have SIX. WEEKS. left until I finish grad school.

…I recently helped throw my friend a bachelorette party. It was so great to get a night out! I feel lucky to have met these girls in grad school and I’ll miss them all so, so much!

…I’m finally going to get to ski! Yes, you can still ski in Colorado in April…it’s not the best but it still counts.

I’m obviously quite talented.

…we leave for Prague in 3 1/2 months. Yikes! So. much. to. do.

…I alternate between obsessing and planning for Prague like crazy, and pretending it isn’t happening.

source

…instead of a required thesis to graduate in my program, we have these huge, horrible things call Oral Comprehension Exams. I sometimes am at my worst when I’m talking, especially under pressure, so I try not to throw up every time I think of them.

…we started a Couch to 5K program that I’m actually loving so far. I tend to abhor exercise, except for yoga and swimming, but we ended our gym membership to save some money, so now it’s back to the basics like running. I think it was great timing for us to start this just as it’s nicer outside, so you actually want to be outside. Although it there was another blizzard this past weekend so, who knows.

…apparently there was a lunar eclipse a few days ago? Did you watch it? I’ve seen one before and they’re awesome and a little creepy when the moon goes all red. Makes me think of the apocalypse or something.

…I’m so excited to be throwing another grad school friend a baby shower next month! Does anyone know any fun baby shower games? I hear Pinterest calling my name.

…It’s Easter this weekend! I always love holidays. This will probably be the first Easter I’ve ever watched a show like Game of Thrones, but…we just don’t want to miss it! Plus, our friends host a watching party every week, so it counts as celebrating because it’s a party, right? Plus, they have a new puppy, and I need my fix of course.

…It’s also my cousin’s birthday on Friday! Yay for celebrations! (I’m so corny right now).

What’s going on nowadays for you?

This is letter N for the A to Z Challenge. Over halfway now!

The post Nowadays appeared first on Amy and the Great World.

I hope you enjoy this brief walk in my shoes :).

6:30am: Wake up and blog! This A to Z Challenge is a commitment for sure!

7:30am: Hop in the shower, get dressed and do the hairs.

8:30am: Coffee fix, gobble a yogurt, bundle up to go brush off my car because, even though it’s April, we still had about six inches of snow the night before. Sneak out quietly (or I try to!) as my sister and her man are sleeping in our living room.

8:45-9:45: Stuck in traffic thanks to the snow!

10:00am: Panel presentation: the students a year behind my class in my graduate program are preparing to go abroad; I was one of the students selected to speak about my experience.

11:00am: Leave the panel, stop to talk to my friend about an upcoming bachelorette party, sprint to my car so I don’t get a ticket–I’m only in one hour parking! (No ticket, whew!)

11:30am: I forgot to pack a lunch, so I grab one at King Sooper’s, plus another coffee, because, you know.

11:45am: Arrive at the elementary school where I am a student therapist. My closet office is locked, so I hunt down someone who has a key. Turns out, the doors are now going to automatically lock due to security concerns, so I convince the secretary to lend me a pair of keys for the day.

12:15pm-1:15pm: I see two of my kid clients and play games, talk to them, talk to their teachers, a just do my job.

1:30-2:30pm: I run to the local Children’s Hospital for a weekly meeting.

2:30-3:30pm: More clients until the end of their school day!

3:45pm: I rush to yet another office to see a child and her mother for a different type of therapy that is part of a federal grant program.

5:15pm: I start the commute home!

6:15pm: I’m home, I’ve freshened up, and now me, E, my sister, and her boyfriend are off to dinner at one of our favorite nearby restaurants.

7:00pm-8:30pm: Dinner and, of course, a stop for frozen yogurt.

8:30-10:30pm: We play several rousing rounds of one of my favorite games, Taboo.

10:30pm-11:30pm: E and I hang out alone, talking and reading, decompressing from the day. I realize I’ve stayed up way too late already, so lights out for me!

So, there you have it! If you wonder what I do all day, now you know :). I also completely forgot to take pictures yesterday (I’m getting really, really bad about that lately) so I don’t have any to show you. But, happy Friday!

What does your typical day look like?

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While I am over the moon to be moving to Prague, I am going to miss having these mountains a short drive away. While Colorado was an adjustment population-wise after my home state of Montana (where it is ridiculously easy to escape everyone), it still is easy to get away, and we’re spoiled. I am lucky to have spent a few years here and most of my life in the West!

In case you don’t know, Rocky Mountain National Park is located right here in Colorado. We stayed outside the park in the town of Estes Park. Both Estes and RMNP are great places for beautiful views, for wildlife watching (we saw elk and bighorn sheep right by our little cabin), for hiking, other outdoors activities, and just relaxing. We mostly wanted to get away from the rush of Denver…so we found a Groupon (more on that later!), I finished my finals (!!!) and off we went!

Read on for a few snapshots from our travels. 

{Lake Estes, right in the town / Bighorn Sheep, a a baby “littlehorn” sheep! / the little back porch of our little cabin / walking on a frozen lake (I don’t think Colorado has gotten the “spring” memo yet) / two killer vistas / driving slow on icy roads}

Once again I am THRILLED to be joining Skimbaco Lifestyle for Instagram Travel Thursday! Add your link below and join in the fun. Instagram Travel Thursdays are hosted by Skimbaco Lifestyle, an online magazine, both in the form of a weekly link-up for bloggers, and through the hashtag #IGTravelThursday. I’m so excited to join them in sharing some of my Instagram photos again this week, and hopefully will again in the future!

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