Goodbye Colorado

I cannot believe that it has been almost eight years since Micah and I moved to Colorado.  Although the years passed quickly, when I think about all of the friends we made, all we experienced and all we accomplished while living in Colorado, it is amazing we did it all in only eight years!

Micah and I had already been 'dating' for four years before we moved to Colorado at the age of 20.  We had decided we were unhappy at our respective schools and we did not enjoy being in a long distance relationship, so we both applied to University of Colorado at Boulder.  Micah had actually considered CU when he was looking at schools in high school, but I never dreamed I would go somewhere so far from home. Although we were simply changing colleges, we both knew Colorado was a 'permanent' move for us.

Here we are in our first week in Colorado...

Since moving to Colorado on January 1, 2003 I have had SIX different jobs (coffee barista, nanny, teller, accounting intern, auditor and accountant III / accounting manager).  Granted I did have two jobs at once for awhile to make ends meet, but that is a lot of jobs for one person to have in less than eight years!  During that same time Micah has worked at several jobs as well, although I'm not even sure how to count them since he worked for the same employers several times (IT job at CU, Micro Motion intern, Lockheed Martin intern (twice), Sandia National Labs intern (twice), teacher's assistant at CU and research assistant at CU).  We were both so fortunate to always have jobs while living in Colorado!

Here I am in my Bank One teller uniform :)

While in Colorado we have done so many triathlons, marathons and other races we can't even count them all.  Running and biking in Colorado is amazing and some days I regret that we did not get on the trails and roads more often.  We have been extremely fortunate to live in such a beautiful place with so many sunny days.

Here we are at the 2003(?) USAT Collegiate National Championships...

We got married!  After living in Colorado for two years we got engaged and eight months later we got married.  We quickly learned that we were in the minority being married so young in Colorado (I was only 22 and Micah was only 23) so it was a little difficult feeling so out of place for awhile, but over time we met some great married friends (and our single friends started getting married) and we eventually found our place.

Here we are on our wedding day!

We met some amazing people while living in Colorado.  Since we have been through so many changes with school and jobs over the last eight years, some of our friends have already moved away from Colorado, but we cherish each and every one of the friendships that we made.

We got college degrees!  This one is truly exciting as Micah is completing his PhD in Aerospace Engineering as I write this!  He has worked soooooo hard and I am so proud of him!  I can honestly say that neither of us knew he would be in college for TEN YEARS when we started dating 12 years ago (or when we moved to Colorado eight years ago), but I know that he loves what he does!  I also graduated with my bachelors, masters and became a CPA :).

We also joined a church, bought and sold our first house, got a cat, went on a few vacations (although we did go back to MI most of the time) and became an aunt and uncle!  Our time in Colorado has been amazing and we are definitely sad to leave, but we will always have great memories.  Luckily, Albuquerque is only seven hours from Denver by car, so we will be back to visit often!

Here we are this past summer at the same lookout we were at in our first pic at the top of this post (I know it doesn't look the same - I was surprised to see they changed the railing from wood to metal!)...

And we know God has a plan for us in Albuquerque, as everything has fallen into place so far, and we are very excited to see what what happens in the next seventy or so years ;).