What a year.  As I sit pondering the past year and trying to decide where to even start, I find myself continuously pushing “backspace” and starting over again.  To make things easy on myself, let’s start where I last left off – the engagement!

People keep asking me: “what does it feel like?”  Ummm, it feels exactly the same, except for this rock on my finger that keeps distracting me from my everyday activities.  No, but seriously, it’s fantastic.  Pete and I have decided to shoot for September 2014 for the wedding to give us enough time to plan and enjoy the engagement.

The following weekend (after the engagement) was my birfday (October 7th) and I had a ball doing my new favorite activity: painting!  Okay, let’s be real here, it’s SIPPING and painting.  There’s a place called Sipping n’ Painting in the Highlands where you can drink and paint while an instructor guides you along in a painting.  I just love it – it’s relaxing, fun and inspiring!

After the big 2-7 I went on a couple of work trips, one of which was in Scottsdale, AZ which allowed me to elongate my trip and spend some time with Pete’s fam: Roman, Brenda, Andy, Liz and little Goobs.  We headed up to their Prescott cabin, relaxed, did some Jeepin’, drank, ate and played (not in that order).

Let’s see, what else happened?  Oh, right, that thing of changing jobs.  Yep, BIG change.  Decided to leave my past job in search of something different.  It was spontaneous and stressful, to say the least, but thus far has proven to be an extremely good decision.  I recently began a new position at a company in Littleton that I absolutely love.  I’ll wait to extrapolate on that until a later date.  I did have some time off in between jobs and was able to travel a bit.

Well, I think that’s about it, in a nutshell.  In between a new job, house-hunting and the holidays I’ve been trying to decide what my 2013 race calendar will look like.  I’m struggling with trying to decide on shorter distances (<marathon) or some ultras (>marathon).

Thus far I have the Canyonlands Half Marathon in Moab on St. Patty’s Day and Grandma’s Marathon lined up.  Besides those and the handful I’m seriously contemplating (Vail Pass Half Marathon, Pikes Peak Marathon, Bear Chase), I guess I just need to fill in the gaps.

I have way too much to say about this past year’s races and events, so I’m going to write up a year recap before 2012 ends – hopefully in the next couple of days.

Happy Christmas everyone!!