Over the weekend we visited Jared on his Denver away rotation. He had two days off in a row (I can't wait for when that's the standard and not a special occasion) so we took advantage and made the four-hour drive. We arrived Saturday afternoon, and we had dinner at Jared's hotel where he's living for the month. The food wasn't great, but free breakfast and dinner are always appreciated! Especially in a big city like Denver where eating out can get real expensive.
Our first evening there we walked around Denver's Central Park. I think it's actually in Aurora? There was a duck pond and some cute playgrounds.
I haven't taken any pictures this week, and we are in pure survival mode. This post is my personal vent sesh, so I'd probably skip this one if I were you haha.
Jared's been in Denver all week for an away rotation, just in time for the 3rd biggest snowstorm in Wyoming history to slam us here. It snowed all day and night and day and night all weekend long without stopping once. Big, heavy, thick March snow, all the way up past my waist in many snow-drift spots of our North-facing driveway. We don't have a snowblower and it's just me and my toddler, who is VERY three and would prefer that I do nothing productive ever, including shoveling. But the shoveling absolutely has to be done, over and over again, lest it reach the height of halfway up our garage like it did for our neighbor who's out of town this weekend. I wish I was out of town this weekend. Definitely regretting not spending this rotation in Utah, but it's too late for that now. The reason we stayed is we're closer to Denver here and hoped we'd be able to see Jared on the weekends. Hasn't panned out so far, but maybe next weekend.
Anyway, so I spent every second of free time this weekend shoveling. My whole body is so sore, and I'm ravenously hungry all the time. I try to take Jack out with me to shovel, but he has a time limit of maybe 20 minutes playing out there before he wants me to go inside with him, and 20 minutes isn't long enough to shovel snow this heavy and high. So I've ended up doing a good bit of shoveling before Jack wakes up or during his nap. And then he doesn't go to sleep until like 9:00 at night because daylight savings. I am struggggling. Solo parenting and solo nonstop record-snow shoveling might actually be the death of me. I've done nothing but diffuse toddler tantrums, shovel my brains out, and stress for days. I'm exhausted. It doesn't help that Savvy can't figure out how/where to go to the bathroom since the snow is taller than she is. She woke me up probably a dozen times last night scratching to go outside and try to figure out how to do her business. Finally at 4:00 a.m. I just let her out front to run rampant in the streets and hopefully find a suitable spot. Took her 15 minutes but seemed to do the trick. I shoveled a pathway to a patch of grass for her in the backyard today. Glamorous.
Looks like it's gonna be just me and my trusty ol' shovel tomorrow in the middle of another snowstorm. And then probably more shoveling this next weekend too if the forecast is correct. Someone ship me off to Grenada, please and thank you. I've never been so anxious for the arrival of spring in my entire life. Pray for us! We all need it! Jack misses Jared so much, and of course Jared misses us too and is living in a hotel room. Not our finest month, but we've done tougher for longer. We can do hard things. Probably. Maybe. When it rains it pours. Or in our case, when it snows it record blizzards.
To end on a more positive note, 3 things I am grateful for: that having to shovel means we have a warm home with our own driveway, that I have a tv babysitter, and that this is Jared's last away rotation EVER!
---
post edit: It it now the next day, and while it did snow all last night and this morning, it really hasn't been too bad! The snow was much lighter than the last one. Sooo much easier to shovel. And the temperatures are going to be warm all week so with any luck the melting will begin soon. There's light at the end of the tunnel.
This last week we had our realtor stop by and talk with us about getting our home ready to put on the market next month. It was a surreal experience. We're using the same realtor who helped us buy our home 2 1/2 years ago, and it just seems so odd that we're already on the other side. Technically we still have nearly 4 months left before Jared's residency is over, but I just know it's going to fly by. We plan to list our home mid-April, it will probably sell by sometime in May (the market's hoppin here), and then hopefully we won't have to move out until June.
In the meantime, Jared is actively working with the first doctor he rotated with in Orem to get a contract put together. So we sort of have a job lined up. It's Jared's dream job and we're very optimistic about it, but until a contract is actually written up and signed we can't move forward or start looking for houses or anything. We don't even have a number to know what his salary will be yet so definitely no chance of getting home financing in order until we know what the contract looks like. Patience, I guess. We've come 7 years to get to this point. What's another two months?
I guess those are the only major updates. I'm spending this month donating all the things to make moving easier. We've already made a lot of progress. I'm also doing some seriously impressive cooking lately. I made Korean tacos that were *chef's kiss* and yesterday I made grilled lemon and thyme honey lemonade that was *twelve chef's kisses*. Maybe I'll share the recipe once I've perfected it. I want to make a few additions next time.
Ok that's all. Here's a pretty picture of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming since today's post was originally going to be the things we will and won't miss about Wyoming. We'll save that post for next week.
