Weddings and Colorado

Yesterday we hung out with friends of friends, Mike and Lindsay. On Saturday, they are getting hitched. Woohoo!

As we're chatting I mentioned that we're going to Colorado tomorrow (again...woohoo!) and Lindsay says how funny, that's where there are getting married next weekend, in Estes Park, Colorado. Well small world! We're going to Estes Park! Ha! I asked where in the town they are getting married, you know, as if I know anythng about this town and might recognized the name of someplace.

Y'all, they are getting married at the same inn we've rented our condo in!

Talk about a coinci-dink! Now we won't still be there, or trust me, we'd be wedding crashers. But yes we arrive at Black Canyon Inn Monday, check out Thursday and they get hitched there Saturday.

You know what makes this all every more odd ball? None of us are from Colorado. None of us even have family in Colorado. In fact, not one of us has even ever been to Estes Park.

On another super fun wedding/Estes Park note - we're gonna have another wedding in our family!

My cousin Winslow (Mom's bro's middle kiddo, just graduated college, going to grad school in the fall) is life-guarding at the Estes Park YMCA and his girlfriend Megan works there too. Well she's not the girlfriend anymore! On Friday he proposed! And she said yes! Woohoo! We'd already been making plans to see them while we're there next week. So I'm hoping tomorrow we can take them to dinner and congratulate them on their engagement. We'll be the first family members they'll have got to see since he popped the question so I'm looking forward to ooo-ing and awww-ing over the situation with them. Hurray weddings!

Photos of the newly engaged couple, amazing mountains and general vacationing to come soon!

Dos Mas Dias

I only have two more days at work until its time for VACATION. Woohoo! Since the last blog post, here's the scoop...

• Renting a car is wicked expensive. I hadn't really even put that into our vacation budget. I figured, $25 a day, 4 days, $100. Whatever. Its vacation. $100 isn't even budget worthy when you are taking vacation; it falls into misc. Omigod. I was so wrong. I searched and initially came up with quotes for $400! Then our friend Chris, who works at Enterprise, crunched some numbers and got it down to $300. (I don't think "down" can fairly be used here but whatever.) I ended up find a Denver local place for $270 but needless to say that's a tid bit above the $100 I didn't budget. Wowzas.
• There's a lot of poop. Both Amandas, who remember each have wee babies, have been Facebooking/blogging/texting about poop. My Amanda (the other Amanda is her bff) actually sent me a picture of Taygan's poo explosion and asking how excited I was to visit. Dear Amanda, not until I create my own baby will I deal with poo explosions. You made the baby, you clean up the explosions. (This goes on brief hiatus if I'm babysitting. I wouldn't let the kid hang out in its own poop until mom got home. But guess what. If mom or dad are home, poo explosions are all them.)
• I won a raffle! At the charity happy hour I went to last week I won the door prize for a month of free boot-camp style workout class. But its no where near me so Brittany is going to be using it. I expect she'll have a very sore month ahead of her.
• "Wicked" was wicked good. And now I've used "wicked" three (well actually four) times in one blog. When I got to Houston, Mom and I toasted to a "wicked good weekend" (five times). How cute is she to suggest that toast! She's so clever. And it was a wicked (six) awesome weekend with shopping, shrimp dinner by Dad, late night wine with Mom, lazy Sunday of baseball, fancy dinner out, musical downtown and breakfast with the Grandma. Fabulous darling, fabulous.

OMG Hot Condo

First we booked a room at the Black Bear Lodge in Grand Lake, CO which is on the western edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. Little kitchenette, hot tub, ya know good stuff. And then the next day we discovered it did not have AC. Being Texans we IMMEDIATELY canceled the reservation. July without AC equals no way Jose. The lodge owner, though very nice, implied that I might be crazy for thinking I need AC up in the mountains.

And then I found out why. Oh right, nothing in the RMNP (as the locals call Rocky Mountain National Park) has AC. But by this point I felt too silly to call the place back and request my reservation back. With Grand Lake being so small, there weren't many other lodging options left on our short notice for a July 19 vaca.

I moved on. Estes Park is the main town along RMNP and is on the east side. At first we avoided this for not wanting to be in a tourist town. But then, there are certain conveniences that come with a tourist town. Like the best hikes are in that area, hence how the town developed. More other things to do, more lodging options. So... Estes Park it is!

I perused the Estes Park Convention & Visitors Bureau and discovered the coolest travel tool in the world. On their site you can enter in your dates, prefered lodging type, price range and a couple other things and the hotels/lodges will EMAIL YOU if they are available. No more Google searching or visitors bureau scanning. Today I got about 25 emails from places that were a good fit for us. After narrowing it down, Ross and I picked Black Canyon Inn. We have a beautiful one-bedroom condo there for what I feel is a steal of a deal...last minute booking did come with an advantage.

We'll stay there three nights and then spend our last night in Denver. We have lodging, plane tickets, know we want to hike and take the Coors Brewery tour. And that friends, ends the planning. Colorado here we come!

Photos from blackcanyoninn.com.

This Month Revised

I must revise my earlier post. This month I will not smooch my hubby on his first day of work at GFD but for a good reason: the start date has been moved until August. We can handle that though, no worries. But I am doing some other fun things!



This month I will...

• book our vacation to Colorado (done!)
• go to Colorado!

Tricked Out

Who needs an expensive resort when you can trick out your backyard? We got a patio, grill, (redneck) golf course and now, a pool. Woot woot!

It may be a little redneck, what with the kiddie pool and PVC pipe yard game, but ya know, you have to embrace your inner Texan. And trick out your yard Texas style.

Hello July! I'll be spending the month with you from the convienence of my inflatable pool, complete with cup holders.

This Month I Will...

• have a celebratory dinner with Ross, Ryan and Sus re: Ross' new job.
• celebrate my 3 year anniversary at Girl Scouts. Btw, I definitely have had it in my mind that July 1 was my anniversary however thanks to the terrificness of blogs, I discovered that no, July 2 is my anniversary. However I am not going to take back all the "hey its my anniversary" statements I made today. No. We're going with I started the week of July 1...just because in 2007 July 1 was a Sunday is irrelevant.
• celebrate 4th of July
• celebrate 3 years since our first date on July 5, 2007 (this is actually how I realized that my GSCTX anniversary was a day off. Whatever, I knew the important anniversary, the one with my hubby)
• finally book our trip to Cozumel, as soon as we know when Ross' medical exam for GFD is
• see Wicked! in Houston with Mom and eat an amazing shrimp dinner cooked by dear old Dad
• visit Grandma!
• go to Cozumel (fingers crossed!)
• smooch my hubby before his first day at GFD, the dream gig
• go to Boston to see my family, eat lunch at the BU pub, watch Jess & Rob get married and meet baby Taygan

I am jazzed about July!!