greetings from colorado!

Hello from the Mile High City! We're headed into our 2nd night in Denver, so I thought I'd check in and post about what we've been up to. I'm going to try to get pictures uploaded to a set in my flickr account every night or so, so I don't forget what the pictures are of and to make it easier than doing 10 days of pictures at one time when we get home. Also, this might seem weird, but I thought it would be fun to photograph every meal I have while we're here, so there is a set of those photos on my flickr account as well.

I flew out here yesterday morning on a direct flight from Huntsville with my mom, and we took a cab to my grandparents' house in Aurora to catch up and wait on my dad to arrive (he had a later flight). I haven't seen Grandma and Grandpa Frank in 6 years or so, so it was awesome to hug them and talk. They have the sweetest garden in their backyard, where I remember playing croquet with my sister and cousins when we were little.

 

We got to do one really cool thing yesterday -- a friend of my grandparents' from their previous home in Buena Vista was visiting with her granddaughter, who is paralyzed from the chest down and was attending a wheelchair sports camp at a local school. We got to go watch her ride around the track in her bicycle (several miles worth and super fast, in the burning heat) which was amazing. She is extremely athletic; she plays rugby, skis, water skis, plays basketball, races her bike...and she has excelled in competitions. It was amazing to see her in action. That girl has more strength and athletic talent in her 2 arms than I have in my whole body.

Anyway, after my dad arrived last night, we drove another 40 miles into Denver and had some delicious Mexican food - extremely spicy! We also popped into the nicest Wal-Mart I've ever seen in Highlands Ranch, where our hotel is, to get some necessities. After a glass of wine and some TV, I knocked out and slept hard after getting about 4 hours of sleep the night before.



This morning, we had a yummy hot breakfast downstairs here at the hotel (a nice Residence Inn; we have a 2-bedroom suite) and headed out for a little shopping, a drive over Squaw Pass on Mount Evans, some sightseeing, and lunch-then-coffee at Idaho Springs. Back in the Denver area, Dad dropped of Mom and me at a center that had an excellent quilt shop right next door to a Joann's. Heaven! We spent a couple hours picking out lots of goodies before Dad came back to pick us up...I think he is pretty glad Mom has someone to do girl shopping with while we are here.



Tonight, my parents took me out for an amazing Italian dinner. We got back to the hotel awhile ago and are relaxing before bed. I got a new hand embroidery project transferred and in the hoop to work on in the downtime here. I'll make an attempt to blog a few more times from the road. We're planning on another short-ish day trip tomorrow, and I'm excited for Nathan to arrive on Tuesday!