Keep your pants on, and turn around

We went to Colorado.
The day we left Bobbie told me that someone was 'like to die' while I was gone.
We rented a car. It was a Kia Soul. I think Anna wants one now.
We drove to the far side of Missouri the first night and stayed in a hotel just outside of Kansas City. The next day we drove from Kansas City to Colorado Springs.
We got in to the Springs at about eight that night. My mom set up an air mattress in my sister's room (my sister having taken her bed with her to college). It was actually the nicest air mattress I've been on. The first couple nights we thought it was leaking because we had to fill it up every few hours to keep it comfortable, but I think, since it was the first time it had been used, it was just stretching out. It got better the longer we were there.
We arrived on a Saturday. On Sunday my parent's church celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. They had five of the ten pastors in the church's history at the service, and they all took part in some form or another. There was a lunch afterwards, but I was sad to discover it wasn't a potluck because I wanted to show Anna how a Colorado potluck doesn't have all the yellow food you find in an Indiana pitch-in.
I was blown away when I discovered all the high schoolers in the church were the ones I still picture as little kids from my days in Colorado. I was also rather surprised how many people didn't seem to recognize me either.
On Monday, Anna and I met Heather in Castle Rock for coffee. It was a good time. It was awesome to have a chance to get Heather to ourselves for a bit before all the wedding craziness happened. She was surprisingly relaxed for a bride-to-be during the week of her wedding.
My parents took Anna and me out for dinner on Monday night. They chose Carrabba's. I had never been there before. It seemed overpriced. Anna went for the cheapest thing on the menu: grilled chicken. It was $11, and it was the smallest chicken breast I've ever seen.
Tuesday night, we were invited to have dinner with Greg and Bri and Greg's parents. We got to meet Greg and Bri's two kids: Amos and Jaela. They are cute. They made me laugh a lot. Jaela never stopped smiling. We had a great time just sitting and talking to Greg for awhile. But it was absolutely shocking to watch a little kid run up to him and call him 'Daddy'.
On Wednesday, Anna and I drove up to Greeley to see my sister. She's contemplating getting married to a hobbit. I asked her if he has hairy feet. She said that I had better not make fun of his height to his face, or he will hate me forever. I don't think I could make fun of his height to his face without straining my back from bending over so far.
While we were in Colorado, I discovered that the Rockies had a make-up game against the Phillies on Thursday. I also knew that all of our friends would be getting in to Denver that night. I thought to myself, "self, we should go see the Rockies play the Phillies and then we'll already be up there to meet up with our friends." So we did. Except the Rockies decided to rain on my parade, and they blew a four run lead. I was very sad. I might have hit the seat in front of me a few times. But we had our friends to see.
We all had a suite together in a hotel in Denver. I was expecting two rooms of four beds, but it was actually like a small two bedroom apartment with three beds total. Anna and I got to be the 'parents' and got to stay on our own in one room while the others divided up the two beds in the other bedroom. Oddly enough, somehow that translated into Jana sleeping on the fold-out bed in the couch.
The best thing about seeing Janna, Sara, Bob, and Jon again was that it wasn't weird at all. It was just awesome.
That first night we sat around and played 'The Game of Things' for awhile. While we played, I think Sara was slowly losing her mind out of exhaustion, and Jana kept making fun of the rest of us who were used to the Eastern Time Zone. I don't know how we didn't get kicked out of the hotel. Sara was as loud as I've ever heard her.
Friday morning, Heather had us all meet at a local breakfast place called Snooze. It must have been a pretty neat place because we saw a guy from the Food Network there. I had pancakes. They were very good. The place was kind of cool. We spotted a waitress with a tattoo of Michigan with a star over what could have been the Holland area. She even looked Dutch. We figured it would be rude to ask since she wasn't actually our waitress.
After breakfast with Heather, those of us not actually getting married the next day went down to the Garden of the Gods. Jon and Bob broke the rules and climbed on the rocks. There was a couple getting their wedding pictures taken. We're probably in half of them. Ranger Jon explained all the geologic formations to us.
After we were done at the Garden of the Gods, we got dinner at Chick-fil-a so that Jon could experience it for the first time. I never did get his reaction. Jon, please comment with your reaction to your first Chick-fil-a experience.
That night, Heather and Jordan came over to our suite and played the game of things with us. I guess we were their bachelor and bachelorette parties all in one.
The wedding wasn't until five on Saturday so we drove over to Red Rocks. Though I've lived much of my life in Colorado, I had never been to Red Rocks. I must say that after seeing it, I'm disappointed that there was never a concert there I was interested in seeing. It would be awesome.
We went to Hammond's Candies to see their free factory tour. It wasn't terrible. It wasn't great. It would have been much better if they were actually making candy while we were there. I guess we got in too late because they were pretty much done with their daily candy making. From there, we went back to the hotel to change for the wedding.
The wedding was at a 'tennis pavilion', except I didn't see anything related to tennis anywhere. I'm still not sure where we were or what the building was that we were behind, but it seemed to be part of this big estate in the middle of Denver. The ceremony itself was held in a relatively small area with lots of grass and brick work and vines, and it was lovely. But that was only a small part of a much larger garden area full of walkways and flowers and trees. It really was a wonderful place for a wedding.
The reception included a dinner complete with genuine barbeque (smoked) beef brisket. It was awesome. Therefore, Heather, I give your reception two thumbs up.
There was dancing. I didn't dance. I would have slow danced with Anna, but there weren't too many slow dancing songs. We stayed around for several hours chatting and hanging out. Heather and Jordan did a good job of trying to see everyone who had come to the wedding. It was nice to be able to get to give her a proper goodbye before we all went our separate ways.
On Sunday, we decided to walk around the 16th Street Mall for awhile before Jana had to go to the airport for her flight back to California. After we had walked up and down the mall for awhile, Anna and I took Jana to the airport while Jon tagged along. The rest of our friends went on a tour of Coors (the brewery, not the ballpark). We had a nice civil discussion about immigration law while we took Jana to the airport. It was sad getting to the airport. We didn't want to say good bye to our hipster commie friend.
Anna wanted a ukuleles. So after we got rid of that dirty communist, we went in search of a music shop that sold ukuleles. We found one. Anna found herself a new ukulele. She was happy.
We spent much of our hang out time in the company of Ben and Sarah, who are friends of our friends from Calvin. Anna and I hardly knew them at all, but because of their friendship with our friends, they accompanied us on most of our adventures. Sarah had a couple friends who lived in Colorado Springs. So on Sunday night, she arranged to meet them for dinner. Anna, Jon, and I all drove down to the Springs to meet up with everyone else for dinner. I felt bad for Jon the whole time. He ended up stuck at the end of the table looking very lonely with Sarah and her two friends. Anna and I were on the other end with Bob and Sara. We weren't lonely. We were just amused that Sara still felt drunk from the brewery tour.
We went to a Rockies game on Monday. That was awesome. Tulowitzki hit a long home run, and the Rockies actually won. Ubaldo Jimenez was the starting pitcher, and we got to see him get his team record setting 18th win. We all got very sunburned. Poor Sara is probably still feeling it in her knees. Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't developed skin cancer on my ankle yet.
That night, we decided to just order pizza and hang out in the suite. We ordered carryout from Domino's. We used online ordering. The website even told us the name of the person making our pizza. I can't remember what the name was for sure. It might have been Jenny. Jon and I went to pick it up. We gave "Jenny" about twenty minutes to make our pizza before we went. When we showed up, we discovered that "Jenny" was the only one working and that she was frazzled out of her mind. Our pizza ended up taking twice as long as it should have, but we got a free two liter of Coke out of it.
Jon's flight was Monday night. Sara and Bob took him to the airport. It was sad to see him go as well.
Sara and Bob left before we did on Tuesday morning to make their flights. We said a sad farewell.
Anna and I were the last to leave. My mom ended up actually wanting to meet one more time before we hit the road. So we met for breakfast at a little place called Le Peep. We then said goodbye to her and hit the road.
We drove from Denver to just outside of Kansas City on Tuesday. The bathroom in our motel smelled faintly of pee, and we were awoken in the morning by someone opening and then closing our door.
All the residents have my cell number in case of an emergency. We were about two hours from Columbus when my phone started ringing. I answered. It was Beulah. Beulah wanted me to know that her porch light was out. Apparently that constitutes an emergency. I was just grateful I didn't get any ridiculous calls while I was actually in Colorado.
We arrived back here on Wednesday night. The apartment hadn't burned down. No residents had died. I think it turned out to be a very successful trip.