Pioneer Day (Non)Celebration

Today, the 24th of July was just another day. Dave went to work, I played with Ryan. It seems like nobody, (except for the parade participants) celebrates anymore. After dinner our neighbors invited us to watch their impromptu fireworks show. So a bunch of the neighbors and their kids watched fireworks. Maybe we'll start some kind of tradition next year...potluck bbq with fireworks. And you're all invited.

And 6...

...pounds that we each gained at dinner last night...

Happy Anniversary, Linds! I can't imagine my life without you!

Happy Anniversary!

Well, today marks the day for another year of marriage. That makes 6 now. My, oh my, how time flies when you're having fun! So, after 6 years, 5 airplane trips across the Pacific, 4 trips to the Gorge, 3 college degrees, 2 job changes, and 1 child later... here we still are, happy as can be. Here's to many more happy years to come! I love you Dave!

Flamingo George

So here's the last account of our summer vacation. On Sunday, we drove to Flaming Gorge and met up with my family. It was so nice to get up there and have our huge tent all set up for us. It was also fun to have all of my aunts there, even the one's from Texas and California. We had lots of fun playing the usual camping games (Scrabble, Password, Apples to Apples, etc) and Ryan had lots of fun playing with the dogs in the "firetruck" (aka motorhome). Dave was bummed because he couldn't ski, but he enjoyed taking Ryan out on the waverunners. Swimming in the lake was also fun, and very refreshing (a bone-chilling 69 degrees). It was nice just to take it easy and lounge around all day, whether on the boat or back at camp. Of course, we had to chase Ryan around a lot and he fell a lot on the not-so-paved road, so he got lots of scrapes on his knees. We had a very fun time on our vacation, but it was nice to come home!

The Wedding

Saturday was the day of the big wedding. So we packed up and drove about 45 minutes west of Denver to another little town called Georgetown. It was such a fun little town nestled in the mountains. After the quick drive, we checked into our hotel early and took a nice little nap.

Let me give you a little background story about the wedding planning. To my understanding, Tyler and Kari (bride and groom) put a nice down payment to hold the date for the wedding at a different site. About a week and a half before the event, the went to pay for the rest, when they discovered the site was double-booked. Apparently the employee taking the down payment took the down payment and left town. So they relocated the wedding to this place in Georgetown and of course, were out a large sum of money. Then the Monday before the wedding, the photographer's wife and daughter were in a nasty car accident and had been in the hospital the entire week. He was still planning on photographing the event until Friday night when his daughter wasn't doing so well. So he had to cancel. Ronda, we got all the pictures we could! So was anybody at all surprised when....

....it rained the entire evening!!! Other than the weather, it was a beautiful wedding in a beautiful setting. Great food, great company, great flowers, great couple, and great cake! Congrats Tyler and Kari!

We'll post more pictures with the rest of our vacation in the next entry.

BBQ & Rockies Game

On Saturday, we attended the pre-wedding barbecue at Bruce & Ronda's house. They live about 30 minutes east of Denver in a little town called Strasburg (population 1,402 in the year 2000). The area looked just like what I picture Nebraska to be like - very flat with fields in every direction. We had a good time with Ronda's family and I finally got to meet Bruce Lee (Dave's uncle, not the kung fu master). Ryan even got to take a ride on Bruce's tractor. He thought it was just great!

After the BBQ, we headed to the Colorado Rockies game with the entire Lee clan. For those of you who haven't heard the score for the game, check out the box score:

Yes, you saw it correctly, 17 to 18 for the Rockies. And yes, it was every bit as long as it sounds. But we had a great time at the game and Ryan was uncharacteristically good. He didn't even try to run off. Dave and I were shocked! Can you believe that the Rockies scored like 5 or 6 home runs? Every time Colorado hits a home run, the fountains in the outfield go off, which I thought was fun.

Before homerun After homerun

Of course, with it being the 4th of July, we got to watch fireworks after the game. It was Ryan's first experience with fireworks and he seemed to like it. I think he would have shown a lot more excitement if it wasn't 11:00pm.

Watching the game Waiting for fireworks

Watching fireworks

All in all, it was a very fun 4th of July and we took part in the typical 4th of July festivities: BBQ, baseball, fireworks. We're so American. Actually, Dave's American. I'm only 1/2 American, so that would make Ryan 3/4 American, right?

The Drive

We finally got to go on our summer vacation this week. We first stopped in Denver and then camped at Flaming Gorge on the way home. I'll tell you all about it, but it would take too long to do in one sitting. And who wants to read a really, really long entry all at once? So I'll give you the account in installments. Here is the first, entitled "The Drive."

We left on Thursday afternoon. Ryan was asleep before we left the valley. He slept clear to Evanston. Isn't that the best? No screaming child in the back seat...yet!

Ryan was so good in the car. We didn't even have to used the DVD player. He only got mad when he was hungry for dinner, about 15 minutes outside of Rawlins, WY, which is where we planned to stop for dinner/gas. So Ryan ate his first Happy Meal ever (with the apple dippers and apple juice substitutions, of course). Look at the stupid little toy he got. Come on McDonald's, can't you do better than this for my boy? I don't even know what it is or what it's supposed to do, but Ryan had fun with it in the car. New things are always fun, I guess.

Here's the best view of Wyoming.

We finally arrived in Denver, and as you can imagine, we were all very excited to be there and be out of the car after 8 hours of driving excitement. Next up...the wedding barbecue and Rockies game.