Taking Advantage Of My Last Weeks In Colorado

Hey everyone! Things are finally moving forward with the sale of our house and our move back to the Midwest! Our house is under contract and should close next month (knock on wood). Hopefully, everything goes smoothly with that. I’m pretty tired of dealing with it, to be honest. Our movers are also scheduled, and we have a place to go for a while until we find a permanent home. It feels like I’ve mentioned this in every post, but I promise we’ll be moved soon.

In the meantime, we’ve been taking every opportunity to get out and enjoy Colorado while we still can. Last weekend, we took a train up to the top of Pike’s Peak – over 14,000 ft! My son is a big train fan and we saw some wildlife on the way, so he had a blast. We’ve also been going on a bunch of motorcycle and bike rides around town to take advantage of the amazing weather we’ve been having. We live close enough in town that there are a few restaurants only a couple of miles away. Lastly, when we had several open houses scheduled and needed to be out of the house, we went and stayed the weekend in Grand Lake, Colorado. It’s a small mountain town a few hours away that sits right on the banks of a beautiful mountain lake. While we were there we stumbled upon a small festival and even rented a boat for the afternoon. I highly recommend a visit! 

Funnily enough, that weekend is also when I participated in Kelley Direct’s “Topics in Business Analysis” course, which was a professional development course formatted like a leadership seminar. The seminar consisted of a full weekend of individual live lectures and discussions. Each lecture focused on a different topic, such as “Communicating the Value of your MBA,” to “Influencing without Authority.” There were a lot of different topics to choose from. You didn’t have to attend them all but needed 9 total sessions to be able to receive full credit for the course. They also provided pre-recorded material, as well as recordings of all the live sessions. This allows you to work around your schedule and mix live sessions with pre-recorded ones to make the best use of your time. Since we were on a bit of a vacation, I only participated in a couple of the live ones. My recommendation would be to take a look at all the different options offered and make a plan for which ones you want to attend live. It is a great option and any time you get to interact with your classmates is always a good time. I would definitely take advantage of these professional development courses whenever you can! 

The next time I talk to you, we’ll be moved out of our house and on our way to Missouri! See you then!