Paul and I have had quite a summer so far!  It’s hard to believe that classes start back for both of us this week!  Carolyn’s students return on Tuesday, and Paul’s cadets begin class on Thursday!  The summer flew by!  We were finally able to take our long-awaited Honeymoon cruise, and we’ve managed some other day-trip type of adventures as well.  We were gone for almost 3 weeks for our Honeymoon — we drove down to Oklahoma City and spent a day with our parents and dropped Rascal and Bandit off with Paul’s parents before flying to New York.  We were able to have dinner on Thursday evening with some of my NYU friends before our cruise ship left Brooklyn Piers Friday morning (Friday the 13th!).  The ship stopped at 4 ports-of-call: West End, Bermuda; San Juan, Puerto Rico; St. Thomas; Turks & Caicos.  All in all we were gone for 10 days and we loved every minute of it!  We ate too much, spent too much time in the sun, stayed up too late, and had a blast!  When we returned from the cruise Paul and I spent 3 days in New Jersey with friends and family, then spent 3 days in OKC with our parents before returning to Colorado Springs! I tried my hand at making a homemade ice cream cake for Paul for his birthday.  It turned out to be an 8-layer monstrosity, and it’s a good thing that we had our sponsor cadets over for the weekend to help us eat it.  Mmmmm….ice cream cake….. This past weekend we went camping and hiking up at Estes Park, Colorado (the town right outside of Rocky Mountain National Park) with one of my friends and colleagues from the new high school and her husband.  Perhaps it wasn’t a great weekend to camp, as the only thing guaranteed during a camping weekend is that you will NOT get a good night’s sleep!  (Not what we need the week before classes start!!!)  Nevertheless, we hiked about 10 miles on Saturday - one hike to Bridal Veil Falls, the other to Gem Lake, enjoyed a thunderstorm, cooked hotdogs and smores at our campsite, drank good wine with great company (Paul’s parents joined us as they were on vacation), ate trail mix, and woke up to bacon cooking (not our bacon, sadly…but we did enjoy banana-nut muffins!).   I know that it’s been a long time since Paul and I have updated, and we’ll try to be better.  Hope that you enjoy some photos of our summer so far! Lots of love.  xoxo 

So it would seem that as soon as the wedding was over Paul and I were up to nothing. I mean, the wedding was a HUGE event to plan for, granted, but our lives didn’t exactly get put on pause during or after the wedding (hard to believe)! Paul spent the semester continuing to teach computer science at the Academy, and I had a busy semester as well, working with seniors to finalize college plans, pass classes, and graduate. I think it’s funny how the connection between passing required classes and being able to graduate high school isn’t always made, even during a student’s senior year!

If you didn’t have the opportunity to see wedding photos, check out our photographer’s website: www.kenwrightphotos.com.
Click on “Galleries”
Click on “2007″
Click on “Carolyn & Paul”

After wrapping up our spring semesters, we immediately started packing and preparing for our Honeymoon! My last day of of work was June 6th or 7th, and all of a sudden I thought “in 3 days we’re leaving for 2.5 weeks, and we haven’t done ANYTHING to get ready!”

Paul was able to get tickets to the Air Force v. Army game for this past Saturday. It was the first Air Force game Paul had been to since he was a cadet and fully took advantage of

a) not having to be in uniform

b) not having to do push-ups with every AFA score

c) not having to stand up the entire time

Having never been to a game at the Academy before, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all the cadets march in with their squadrons, cadets and teachers parachuting down (including the mascot!), the marching band, the fly-by and “prisoner exchange” where the cadets from USMA and USAFA who are spending the semester studying at the other school are exchanged to watch the game and cheer for their own team.  It turns out that because of NCAA financial violations, no longer can all of the cadets rush down onto the field to do push-ups.  Apparently it’s now a select group of ~150-200 fourth degrees (freshmen) who do it.  It changes with every game.  (Our cadets that we sponsor told us this — they have a great time comparing notes with Paul about how things are different from when he was a cadet!)
Enjoy the photos — we can’t wait to see everyone in just under three weeks!!

Well, we almost have everything planned out.  With the exception of picking out tuxes and arranging transportation, everything (I hope) is taken care of.  Check out our wedding website: www.e-graham.net/wedding for more information!

I donated 10+ inches of hair to Locks of Love (www.locksoflove.org) on Friday. Here is an after shot of my new hair cut — it actually looks a lot better when I style it (it’s layered a lot more than it shows in the pic). Paul and I went hiking today, so that’s why it’s kind of flat and boring. I have some photos of my student cutting my hair that I’ll post as soon as I find my camera.  My kids had a GREAT time — together with 8 students and 1 parent, we donated about 166 inches of hair!! (One boy shaved his head — three 20 inch ponytails!).  My kids were on the news too, which they loved.

We have a wedding location! We plan on getting married at the Cadet Chapel on the United States Air Force Academy! Enjoy the photos! You can also check it out at http://www.usafa.edu/superintendent/hc/

(it glows BLUE inside!!!  Air Force Blue, that is — not Carolina blue.)

(We’re excited!)

We’re engaged! Paul proposed last night after a belated Valentines dinner!   We haven’t stopped smiling since!   (I said yes, of course.)

Enjoy the photos!

Some background:

Paul’s new nephew’s name is William Thomas. In Australia, there is a brand of tea called “Billy Tea” which, over Christmas, we decided would be also be a good nickname for the new little guy (we’re kidding — we’ll call him Will, like his parents ask). I found a patch on ebay, and made a quilt to match it.

Being relatively new to Colorado, all of this snow is new to me — but I love it!

The following are some random photos from this winter. The first batch are from the Reservoir hike that Paul and I did on the Academy grounds. It was way too icy to make it all the way to the reservoir (I was more concerned about how we’d get down than continuing up), but gorgeous nonetheless. The next set are from the first two blizzards we had (the first in late October, the second right before Christmas), and the last set are of the gingerbread house I made. I anticipated sharing the gingerbread house with my colleagues, but because of one of the aforementioned blizzards and the subsequent snow days, I ended up giving it to our school’s librarian who I happened to run into.

…and a couple shots of Rascal and Bandit just to make you laugh. What crazy dogs.

Welcome to Stories from Colorado. We know that we do not get to see many of our family and friends often because we are pretty spread out — hopefully this site should serve as an easy way to see photos and keep in touch a bit better. Enjoy!

We’ll start out with Christmas 2006! (If you right click on each photo and select “View Image” you can open a larger image in a new window.)