First Half of June

 After preparing for the orientation in Pueblo the previous week, the first week of June was dedicated to training in the Pueblo crew. I worked very long days with that 2 hour commute! It was fun to get to know people on the crew and to see some of the plans I made in action! It was a little tedious at first, because now this was the third time I had been through the two days worth of paper work- once for my own orientation, once for the other three crews' orientation, and now for the Pueblo orientation. We made it through though, especially with the help from my ice breaker and team building games! There was lots of time for me to fill up with activities throughout the week, and it was nice having a little extra time to have some fun. 

On Friday night, the 9th, Bill and I somewhat secretly flew to Wisconsin! It was our cousin Jon's wedding. He and his wife Imane (E-man) are already married, but their ceremony was in Canada, and none of our family was able to make it. It was great to finally meet Imane- she is lots of fun and fits right into the family! The ceremony was on Saturday and we stayed until Sunday night. The weekend was filled with lots of fun, family, games, singing, and of course lots of food! It was so wonderful to see lots of family- many people I hadn't seen since our own wedding last year.

Aunt Becky, Imane, Jon, and Uncle Kirk

After flying into Denver late Sunday night, I had a very early morning heading to work! I had five days of camping ahead of me, I had to get to the office by 630 (leave by 515), and I didn't even know which crew I was going out with! Once I got to work, I found out I was going with the Hayman crew. This crew works exclusively in Pike National forest in the Hayman burn area- a forest fire that occurred ten years ago that was the largest in Colorado history. There are thousands of burned acres in the forest where there is now large amounts of erosion occurring because of the lack of trees and other plants to hold the soil onto the mountain. Our job was to cut down trees (our MHYC saw crew and another conservation group did the cutting) and cut up downed trees (all dead, burned, and crispy trees) and build erosion control structures called head cuts. 

Head cut in progress

Normally, there are more trees and plants to act as obstacles and to drink the water as it goes down. Without these plants, as water trickles down the mountainsides it comes together into big streams and cuts away the loose soil. This erosion can lead to many problems, such as filling in reservoirs with soil. Our job was to fill in these big stream ways to prevent the streams from forming, which in turn, reduces erosion. It was lots of hard work involving lots of heavy lifting of trees and logs and carrying buckets of soil, and also very dirty work- we got covered in ash and dirt every day!

One of the valleys we worked in, the head cuts are in the sides of the hills

 It was very fun to finally be out on a hitch and working with a great crew! I got to make lots of new friends with the MHYC Hayman crew I was with, the Americorps NCCC crew that we have been working alongside with, and it ended up that our saw crew was camping near us as well! I especially enjoyed meeting them because I knew I was heading out with them for ten days for my next hitch. It was hard being away from Ben for those days, especially because we were away the weekend before, too. And I knew how badly he'd been wanting to go camping all summer!

My tent in Pike National Forest

 After getting back from that hitch and taking a much needed shower, I didn't have too much time to rest! On Saturday, the 16th, we dedicated our day to shopping and getting ready for our big date night! We were headed to a 1940's ball in Boulder. First, we shopped for my dress. We went to a cool neighborhood in Denver and found lots of cool vintage shops. We found a neat vintage/resale shop and I tried on lots of dresses. Eventually we found an awesome red dress that we both loved. We weren't sure if it was quite the right style for the era, but we thought it was close enough! Then I realized I would need some sort of jacket to keep warm because the dance was outside. I reached into the sweater rack and first thing I pulled out was perfect! A little blue shrug with a gold military-style looking eagle stitched on the left. At the check out we found a great fedora for Ben and a flower clip for my hair. Then we had to head off to get to my hair appointment! I've never gotten my hair done professionally before, and it was very fun! I knew I wouldn't be able to pull off a 1940s style on my own, so I thought it would be a good idea to get it done for this special occasion! It was really fun to dress up and get pretty after camping and working for a week! I did feel a little under dressed because I was all banged up with scrapes and bruises from working! Luckily, wearing nylons helped cover some of that up!

After I got my hair done we went to pick out Ben's outfit at Macy's. We got him a nice new pair of black dress slacks. Finally we were able to go home, get ready, and head out to the dance!

We had lots of fun at the 1940s ball! We ate some food, had a couple drinks, and did lots of dancing! We saw lots of cool outfits- some people went all out on the 1940s theme! There were also lots of  old planes and cars around that we got take pictures by. And I got a some comments on how great my hair looked, which was awesome! There's bunch more pictures of the party on my facebook. We didn't stay as late as we would have liked because I was so tired from the week, but we still had a great time!

It was a very busy two weeks!