Our Adventure to Lovely Colorado...and what we've been up to since.

:P Blogger is yet again preventing the upload of pictures so another post with the pretties will be forthcoming. Grr.
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We had a wonderful time in Colorado visiting family and friends. Our only complaint about our trip? It was, as usual, much to short. We missed a few people and so we'll just have to come back and do it again. ;) We were in Colorado from June 20 through June 27, but we have some pre- and post-trip photos we think you'll also enjoy including this one of Mark enjoying the last of the allergy-causing gelato. We think it was the marscarpone flavor.

And now, on to the trip - we flew out Tuesday morning. Our flight was a bit late and MeLissa wasn't feeling so well. We made it to Phoenix for our lay over and MeLissa went out to see what our next gate was. Denver, Denver, Denver she was saying as she looked for it. She found the gate and since we had a 20 minute window to make our next flight we started hot-footing it. We made it to what MeLissa thought was the correct gate and then she realized we were next door to the appropriate one. We maneuvered over and the flight attendant said they'd start boarding for Denver. Has anyone yet caught on that we were in the wrong place?

Yep. We were supposed to be flying to Colorado Springs. We tried, but we didn't make it to the right gate in time. Ooops. We had to go stand-by for our next flight. Thankfully, we made it on that flight and didn't have to wait for the next one which would have been arriving pretty late. During our wait, we decided we should eat something. Silly us, though, we didn't actually bring much food with us so we had to go through the torture of finding something - anything - that MeLissa could eat.

This food foraging was no easy task (surprise, surprise!). We know you're all just amazed about that one. ;) MeLissa bought Mark a sandwich from Quizzno's. And, then, after searching high and low, she found Nachoes with "normal" (rather than processed) cheese at the Fox Sports bar in the airport. MeLissa did her usual grilling of the waitress and was assured that there was no garlic on the grilled chicken. So she ordered them. Naturally, when they arrived (as is frequently the case), MeLissa immediately smelled garlic, but she was hungry so she ate them knowing that that next flight was not going to be a fun time. And, it wasn't. Nausea and an allergic reaction...not a good combo, friends.

We finally made it to Colorado where MeLissa handsome little brother, Christopher, (dressed in his dress whites which we really should have gotten a better picture of - darn it all!) was waiting at the airport to pick us up. He took us to his house where we began to settle in.

Anyhow, we hung out and then went to dinner and came home and watched Wedding Crashers. Very funny flick....and perfect for MeLissa, right? We watched another, Just Like Heaven, a couple of nights later and it is one of MeLissa's favorites now.

We think it was the first night that MeLissa also took the ASVAB just for kicks. Chris been pretty frustrated with the potential recruits lately. He had one person get an 8. You need a 35 to get into the Navy. These are not hard questions folks. We're talking basic vocabulary, paying attention and math skills for the most part. At any rate, MeLissa took the test late at night when tired and scored a 90. She qualifies for nuclear stuff. Very cool. ;) Chris had other setbacks that week as far as recruiting went. He had two guys ready to go in and then one came down with gall stones and the other's father wouldn't sign the consent form. We felt pretty bad for the guy. He is seriously missing his ship!

The next day (Wednesday) we went to Pueblo to visit people from MeLissa's college including Laura in the Alumni office who kindly gave MeLissa an Alumni T-shirt, sticker and bandana. Then we had a nice visit and dinner at a Mexican restaurant with some of MeLissa's friends - Amy and Doug. They had just had a baby a couple of days before. Little Nathan and his big sister Olivia came along for dinner, too!

The other activity for the day was outfitting the brother's kitchen with a bunch of useful stuff like baking dishes, mixing bowls, etc. He was a happy camper when he saw all that....especially the grilling tools!

On Thursday, we went to Colorado Springs (so much for MeLissa not having to drive all over during this trip - she did almost every day) and visited an Optometrist that specializes in low vision aids just to see if there was something he could recommend for Mark. Unfortunately, there wasn't, but we're looking forward to networking with him when we get back. The interesting thing about this doctor is that he is actually losing his vision. He is legally blind like Mark, but just like Mark he hasn't let that stop him. In fact, he just won Optometrist of the Year in Colorado...how's that for inspiration folks?

We then had lunch with Marilyn at Mimi's Cafe (yum, yum, yum!). Before lunch, MeLissa found a couple of really cute purses for $10 total. Gotta love it. We then made a visit to Pat, another friend of ours. Finally, we visited Aunt Jo and Uncle Clyde. They had some koi living in a water fountain and were a little grumpy that raccoons were coming to feast. Mark tells the story well - be sure to ask him about it! He definitely found humor in that first meeting!

The next day, we headed back up to Colorado Springs for another day of fun. My youngest brother, Doug, and his adorable girlfriend, Leah (whom we also don't have a great picture of other than from our wedding), came with us. We took a tour of the north end of Colorado Springs which is much further north than it used to be and visited a coffee shop owned by one of our friends for a little Italian Soda (he actually provided these for our wedding). We also made a stop at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate factory to pick up some caramel apples - one of our favorite treats! We then stopped by Whole Foods and grabbed stuff for dinner and our BBQ the next day. We ate dinner and sent them on their way.

On Saturday MeLissa's family came up from Lamar and we had a little BBQ and Christmas in June. It was fun getting to open Christmas and wedding presents that they'd been saving for us. We roasted a chicken on the grill and made pasta salad, cucumber salad, zucchini and other goodies to accompany it. It was an attempt to show MeLissa's dear family that despite her allergies, she's hardly starving! :) It was a great day - we even went on a little drive and found this cute little homestead (which we've since learned comes with some unwanted baggage).

On Sunday, we headed to Denver to see MeLissa's buddy Laura and her mom. We bummed around Park Meadows mall (one of MeLissa's favorites!) and then after a bit we returned to Colorado Springs (with a stop at the outlet mall in Castle Rock where we partook of some Rocky Mountain Chocolate factory goodies) to see another set of friends, Buck and Lyndsay, who'd just had a baby boy, Ridge. Apparently boys are "in" this year. ;) It took us a while to get there since traffic was pretty bad due to a couple of accidents on the highway. We made use of our time by snapping various shots of beautiful Colorado (and the top of the car, noses, fingers, etc. - Mark was taking photos and it yielded some amusing things). :) We stayed at Buck and Lyndsays pretty late and then drove back to Canon City in a really icky rain storm. It was a little scary...but we made it okay. We were sure tired when we got there.

On Monday were back in Colorado Springs again (as you can see, MeLissa's goal to minimize travel all over pretty much was a bust). We visited with a few people on this day. First, we visited with a chiropractor (Dr. Scott) that Mark considers one of his mentors. Then, we caught a glimpse of Brent, a friend who handles graduation stationery and what not for most of the southeastern part of Colorado. Then we took a little visit out to Peyton, Colorado to see Sarah who was the MOH in our wedding. She, too, had a new baby boy - Bryson. What's different about her story is that they were expecting a girl! Apparently Bryson is a trickster (or very modest) and did a great job of hiding a very important part of his anatomy during ultrasounds and what not. He and his brother Carsen were fun to watch and it was nice visiting with Sarah in their new home.

Then was the best part of the day - we had dinner with MeLissa's parents. This was our solution to keep grandma from totally going nuts on Saturday (she was quite eager to get home!). We enjoyed a nice long talk after and got home pretty late, but it was worth it.

We came back to California the next day after lunch with Pat. She gave us a lovely pillow (that MeLissa thinks she might try to make a few more of) as a belated-wedding present. With respect to the trip home, things were a bit tense at times (late flights and such), but everything worked out okay and we made it home, if a little late. We're not too sure we'll be flying US Airways again after all the fiascos, though...

When we came home, we found Pixie pacing the floors as usual. She gets to be a bit neurotic when we're gone, but thankfully, our sweet friend Bonnie had volunteered to visit her and feed her daily while we were away. Bonnie was rewarded with an assortment of Rocky Mountain Chocolates (what else?!) and our gratitude. Pixie was rewarded with a lot of petting from Mark. According to Mark she's gotten all the petting she's going to get for the next 3 months. ;)

One of the most exciting things that has happened since we returned is MeLissa now has a business card. It has a couple of little tweaks that need to be taken care of but that is it. It is just perfect for the image she wants to portray and will really make a great website design, too, with minor modifications. We're very excited about that and we'll share at some point.

This weekend, we were very productive (it's not over yet, but we were!). Yesterday we bought a GPS system (which MeLissa then proceeded to show how much she needed by getting lost twice in the next two hours) and a freezer for the half of a cow that should be coming to stay with us (cut and ready to eat - yum!) in the next week or so. We were pretty fortunate on the freezer (we didn't do too poorly with the GPS either) because we found a clearance model at Home Depot.

The only issue was that they couldn't deliver it. You had to haul it yourself using one of their rental trucks (or your own if you had it, but we don't!) and so we did that. This provided MeLissa's first opportunity to demonstrate that the GPS unit was a good buy. We made it home, unloaded the freezer with the help of Ladarrin our newest neighbor (who's earned himself a good steak). We were very fortunate that he came out when he did because the dolly we'd bought to get the freezer out of the truck had a flat tire. This wasn't the only fiasco related to the freezer, though. Before that, we'd realized we'd left our "clicker" in the Saturn and therefore had to wait for someone to open the gate to our community and, since MeLissa doesn't have a key to the house on her keychain (she just uses the clicker usually), we were going to have to leave it in the driveway. Silly gooses that we are.

On our way to returning the truck was when we got lost the first time (not much but a little) and then, when we were coming home was the second. We figure there will be a lot less of that with MeLissa's new toy which we figured we'd better get her since she's going to be driving all over for the wedding and event business.

We hope you enjoyed this dissertation about our trip and what's been going on since. We'll try to be a little more timely in posting things in the future. :)