I have posted some pictures that were taken shortly after the tornado hit Laramie.  Thank goodness for insurance.   

Our electricity was off for two days as well.  Luckily, Sid and I ecaped to a nice 3-day weekend to Yellowstone.  The electricity was back on to greet us when we arrived back on Monday. 

Pictures from our beautiful Yellowstone adventure to come!

Meet Taj – half Husky, half German Shepherd, about 4.5 months old, 25 lbs, mostly black with some tan and white mixed in, and brown eyes. 

We adopted Taj on May 10th, and he has been wonderful so far.  He is smart and spunky, and loves to play in the snow (we found that out this morning because it snowed 2-3 inches overnight, and Taj went crazy running and sliding in the snow, and of course, eating it).  Taj also loves to wrestle and cuddle up in our laps.  And, though he doesn’t know it yet, he is going to be an excellent running companian in the months and years to come.   

The sign in front of the Comfort Inn in Laramie currently says… “Welcome to Laramie. Spring will come one day.”

It snowed here the first two days of May. This was pretty surprising to me – I expected harsher and longer winters here, but not snow in May! In early and mid April, I took some pictures of our backyard filled with snow, because I was amused that we were getting so much snow so late. Little did I know we would be getting more snow almost a month later!! But, as Comfort Inn assures us, Spring will come one day!

On some of the nicer days, we’ve had a big bunny frequenting our front yard, and then discovered a baby bunny living under our porch in the backyard. I dubbed the bigger one BunBun “Mama” McHopkins, (although I have no idea if it’s the mommy, or even female) and the baby, Baby McHopkins. They are dang cute.

Earlier this Spring, Sid and I headed to Lake Hattie to check it out. In the summer, it’s apparently the place to go for watersports and fishing. The day we went was cold and windy, and no one else was there. Here is Sid at Lake Hattie with the Snowy Range in the background. This is about a 25 minute drive from Laramie.

Since we are on the outskirts of town, our neighborhood borders a lot of open prairie with rolling hills. Going up one of the hills from our neighborhood provides a pretty nice view of the entire town, as well as a nice view of our little neighborhood with the Rocky Mountains in the background. Below are some of the views.

Rocky mountains:

Our house is the second from the right in the second row:

Sid with our neighborhood and mountains in the background.

Me with lots of wide open prairie:

Going up the hill from our neighborhood:

We’ve been in our house for about a month now, and I love it! We have lots of plants now – some are veggies that will be transplanted outside once the weather is nicer, but some are going to stay indoor plants. They make the house so much more cheerful and alive.

Snow is predicted in Laramie later this week. Today it’s supposed to get up to almost 70 degrees, but by Thursday there will be a high of only 33. The weather changes quickly around here!

We have a mama bunny and baby bunny in our yard and they are supercute. They live under our porch.

I was accepted into the University of Wyoming graduate school, and will be pursuing a master’s in political science, focusing on policy analysis, starting this fall. I was also offered a full scholarship and full-time graduate assistantship, which I accepted. I will be super busy! I am going to try to stay full-time at Westat with a flex schedule, so hopefully it will all work out.

Sid and I have run a 5k each weekend for the past 3 weekends in a row. We both dropped over a minute from the first race to the last (Sid dropped almost 2 minutes!) so it is nice to see we are making progress. We are running another 5k in mid-June, and I am planning on running one in early July back in Maryland as well. Will be nice to see if I am any faster as sea level!

Yesterday, I spent about three hours vacuuming, sweeping, and cleaning the house.  Unfortunately, the previous owner did not do much cleaning on his way out!  He left random junk scattered around, some of which is actually kind of nice to have (like a decent stationary exercise bike) but other stuff which is kind of annoying and now we have to get rid of (like some gross food in the fridge).  Nevertheless, it is exciting to get in the house, and I considered all the cleaning a labor of love. 

I was able to get some decent pictures of the inside of the house.   

The floor plan:

The living room – this is the room you first enter as you walk in the front door:

The kitchen – the oven and stove are on the other side of the fridge.  The sliding doors on the left lead outside to a nice deck with some benches in the backyard (I didn’t think to take a picture of that – oops!).  The curtains are closed for the sake of taking the picture, but when they are open, sunlight fills the room. 

Looking from the kitchen into the family room.  Again, there is so much sunlight in this room when the blinds are open!

Bedroom 1 – This is the smallest of the bedrooms.  Though you wouldn’t guess from the picture, it is actually nice and bright – the paint is not as dark as it looks in the picture, and it gets a lot of sunlight.  Might turn this into my office. 

Bedroom 2 – This room, though it looks rather bright and cheery, is actually much darker than it looks in the picture, and doesn’t get much sunlight.  I am a big fan of sunlight. 

The master bedroom – this picture makes the room look small, because I am standing in the closet taking the picture, but it goes further to the left and is the largest of the bedrooms.  I like the window – the kind you can sit in and curl up with a good book.  This room gets decent sunlight when the blinds are open. 

The main bathroom.  This has been remodeled and is pretty nice.  (I didn’t bother taking a picture of the other bathroom, because it is definitely in need of an upgrade.  It will be one of our remodeling projects in the future.)

What a wonderful early birthday present!  After being delayed from Friday, when we were supposed to close, Sid and I officially became homeowners today when we closed on our house.  We will spend any spare time we have this week moving what we can with my little car.  Saturday, with the help of a friend from Denver, we are renting a moving truck and moving the bigger stuff.  By Sunday, we should be completely moved in to our new home!  

It’s been quite a while since I’ve had anything significant to say about my running.  In the months before the wedding, Sid and I had been running off and on, depending on the weather and our time constraints as we vigourously looked for a house and finished last-minute wedding planning details.  When we did run, it was awfully slow, as we tried to get used to the sub-freezing temperatures, the biting winds, and the lack of oxygen in the air at our 7100+ foot altitude. 

We had hoped to get some nice runs in on our honeymoon, but that didn’t work out quite as we planned when I got bronchitis. 

Now that we are back, however, things have really been falling into place!  We have been running consistantly – probably 4 or 5 days every week since we’ve been back.  I am starting to feel like I have a little bit of speed again.  For me, the biggest downer on our runs before the wedding was the feeling that I was so out of shape and had absolutely no speed.  Every run felt like I was crawling, but I couldn’t go any faster.  It was not very exciting to get out the door and run when I felt like that every day! 

Since returning, though, we have incorporated some easy strides into our runs, which has helped me get back into form, and has reminded my legs what it feels like to go a little faster.  I also did a 3×800’s workout last week to try to get my body into the feel of running at tempo-run pace.  It went much better than I anticipated, and since then I have been using better form and have felt faster on all my runs.  I have been quite pleased at the progress I’ve made just in a few weeks. 

I know I am still far from being in the shape I want to be in, but I am more than happy to just be “feeling good” on my runs for now. 

The day we arrived in Punta Arenas, I was not feeling so well.  I had a headache, and attributed it to our vigourous bike ride the day before and getting too much sun. 

We were greeted at the airport by our tour guide, Robert, who took us straight to the Penguin Colony.  Although Sid and I were really pooped and part of us just wanted to crash at the hotel, we really enjoyed seeing the penguins up close and personal in their natural habitat. 

The younger penguins were just starting to lose their “fluff” in preparation for their introduction to the water, but some of them were still adorable little fluffballs.  We got to see the penguins fishing for food and waddling around on the beach. 

Afterwards, Robert took us to our hotel in Punta Arenas.  The next day, we got a nice tour of the city, then we were off on our 3-hour drive to Puerto Natales, gateway to Torres del Paine National Park.  From there, we had a trip into the park scheduled for one day, and a boat trip to see some glaciers the next day. 

Our trip to Torres del Paine was amazing and breathtaking.  We saw mountains, waterfalls, glaciers, lakes, guanacos, foxes, flamingos, condors, and so much more.  Unfortunately, I was really feeling under the weather at this point.  What started as a headache the day before had evolved into some pretty awful coughing, a sore throat, and congestion.  My energy level was way down, so Sid and I had to take it slow.  But truly there is no better medicine than the beauty we saw there that day -  the kind of beauty and peacefulness that renews your soul. 

We later found out that we were extremely lucky with the weather we got for our trip to the park – it was a gorgeous, warm, sunny day when we went, but apparently all the other days had been cloudy and the fog and clouds had blocked many of the majestic peaks.  Lucky for us!

The next day, we boarded a boat for an all day excursion to see two of the grandest glaciers in the park, the Balmaceda and Serrano glaciers.  It was much colder out on the water, and I was still feeling pretty sick – in fact, I had entirely lost my voice – so Sid and I stayed under the deck for most of the way out, and enjoyed the views from the windows down below. 

After a couple hours, we neared the Balmaceda glacier, and Sid and I braved the wind and the cold to head outside for a glimpse of the glacier.  It was huge, surrounded by gigantic mountains coming straight out of the water.  We learned that the glacier has been receding at a rather alarming rate in the last 20-30 years.  The foot of the glacier used to reach the water not so long ago. 

We continued on to the Serrano glacier, where we parked the boat and had a short hike.  We could see dozens of iceburgs that had broken off, floating in the water near its base. 

We enjoyed a picnic lunch before heading back to the boat for our ride back. 

The next day, we headed back to Punta Arenas for a day of shopping.  The day after that, we took a tour to Fort Bulnes, which was the original site of the town of Punta Arenas, before it moved further north to better land. 

Fort Bulnes was perhaps one of the most enjoyable parts of the trip.  There, we stood at the southern most tip of the continent, and enjoyed learning some of the history of the area and exploring the old prison, church, stable, and other buildings.  It seemed to be a seldom-visited tourist site, and we were happy to have the entire area more or less to ourselves. 

Afterwards, we were back to Santiago, where we spent the night before catching our flight back to Maryland the next day, then back to Wyoming the day after. 

After three days in a row of being on a plane, we were happy to be back home in our beautiful state of Wyoming!

After a long day of flying, Sid and I arrived in Santiago late in the evening.  We were greeted at the airport by a driver who took us to our hotel.  It was already dark, so we didn’t spend too much time trying to check out the views.  We basically got to the hotel, ate dinner, and crashed, figuring we would set up our plans the next day.

As we awoke the next morning, we were greeted by amazingly beautiful views out our window.  We had no idea how close we were to the Andes and how huge they were!  They enveloped the city with majestic peaks all around.  We began to look at options for setting our itinerary for the next few days, knowing that we absolutely had to get on top of some of those mountains.  I also wanted to visit some nearby beach towns.  So, we set up a mountain tour for the next day, and a bike tour of some beautiful beach spots the day after. 

The mountain tour was great.  We drove up a ridiculous winding road that had over 60 hairpin switchbacks going up the mountain.  Luckily, neither of us are prone to getting carsick.  It took only minutes of driving to get into the mountains and out of the city, and afte a few more minutes, we could no longer even see the city because it was covered by a thick layer of smog.  The further we got into the mountains, the harder it was to believe that we were still so close to Santiago, one of the largest cities in the world! 

We had a blast taking in the views and seeing some of the wildlife. 

Once we got back into town, we explored the city some, visiting a nearby mall and walking around a beautiful park near our hotel. 

The next day, we were off on our bike ride!  Our tour guides were a father and son team and we had a great time riding with them.  Though the day started off rather foggy, which prevented us from seeing some of the sites on the way out, by the afternoon the sun was out and we were able to see the sites we missed on our ride back.  The beaches we saw were breathtaking, with steep cliffs meeting blue waters. 

While the views were well worth it, the bike ride was actually extremely challenging.  Though we certainly hadn’t been training consistantly, Sid and I considered ourselves in pretty good shape, but this ride really humbled us!  Not only were there ridiculous long, steep hills, but we later found out one of our tour guides, the father, was previously a pro racer in Canada, and at one point was ranked third in the country.  His son has now started racing professionally in Chile.  No wonder we were struggling on the ride! 

The next day, Sid and I were off to the second portion of our honeymoon – southern Chile.  Details of our adventures in Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales in the next recap!

Arriving back at the Murthy’s house to prepare, it was lovely to have some time alone, with only a few friends and family members there.  I jumped in the shower to get the rice out of my hair and remove the remaining bangles (which ended up being quite a difficult task – at least half of them broke coming off, and I had several cuts on my hands by the time I was done!).

Ali and Gabby got to work on my hair and make-up, while Sid enjoyed some time to rest.  As soon as we were ready, we headed to the mansion house to finished getting dressed and ready there.  I put on my dress, and Gabby helped my with my tiara.

Soon it was time for the ceremony to begin.  After a disorganized rehearsal the night before, the beginning of the ceremony started off a little disorganized as well.  I didn’t have anyone assigned to cue the string quartet, I forgot they were rolling a red carpet out for me and started walking too early, and then the red carpet didn’t stay anyway – it started rolling back up.  But, once Daddy and I finally got ourselves down the aisle, everything went smoothly!

The ceremony went quite fast, especially compared to the morning ceremony.  I came close to crying as Jenni sang “You Raise Me Up” but somehow managed to contain myself for the rest of the ceremony.  Linda did an excellent job officiating.  It was all just how I wanted it to be.   We had written our our ceremony, so I was thrilled that it came together so nicely. 

After the ceremony and another quick photo session, we enjoyed a cocktail hour – with a penguin! 

We soon moved around to the reception side as the wedding party was introduced and Sid and I had our first dance together.  We received very touching (and funny!) toasts from Papa Murthy, Daddy, Chris, and Sowmya.  Sid and I enjoyed some food and downtime before making our rounds to say hello to our guests. 

My dad and I shared a father-daughter dance together, then we really got the party started by getting everyone else out to the dance floor.  For the rest of the night, we danced danced danced.  I had so much fun!!!

We did the cake cutting and bouquet toss (Jenni caught it!) and then went back to more dancing.  I was happy that before the night was over, I got a swing dance in with Chris. 

As we danced our last dance, said goodbye to everyone, and began getting our things together, I couldn’t help but think that the day was everything I wanted it to be.  But more importantly, I knew that my new husband was everything I wanted – and more.