Home for a Change

Happy Thanksgiving Y'all!

The place I work at stays open on the Friday after Thanksgiving, which to me is a little crazy, but I just went ahead and took the time off anyway so Darren and I could have a hometown turkey day in Tennessee.

For the first time ever, I saw Rock City.  Aren't these hats amazing?

The black light fairytale dioramas were also...amazing

Thanksgiving morn, all the chillins "ran" in the Turkey Trot.  Sadie kept wanting to walk too, so we effectively came in last place.

I think the course was three miles, so that'd be like a 24 minute mile?  Nice.

My padre still had to work a lot, but thankfully we had time for a beautiful day of frisbee golf.  I'd never played, and it ended up being much more fun than expected.  Thanks uncle Jim for leaving us your frisbees!

We didn't have a super long time in Tennessee, but we still made it out to Sunset South for an afternoon of clambering.  I hadn't spent much time on that side of the area, so I was stoked to explore.

Sunset at Sunset.  Happily we didn't get any tickets.  There used to be a ranger who was a real stickler about everyone being out of the park by sunset.  But, from what I've heard he moved away.  Yippee!

Sooj and Hot Jason came to visit.  We always have so much fun.

I was glad to finally get to hear my very talented cousin rock it out at a restaurant/bar downtown.  I was blown away how he kept switching instruments and was able to play them all beautifully.

We flew out of Atlanta Sunday evening, so we arranged for all of us go to a Falcons game.  Our seats were somewhere fancy like the second section...much better than our nose bleeders in Denver.  AND, the Falcons won!  What I found interesting was how southern the game felt.  From the opening video complete with gospel music and some famous actor emphatically commanding the Falcons to "Rise up!" to the hillbilly and hip hop music throughout the game.

Thumbs rise up for the Falcons.

The fam after the game.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Southern Fried 4th of July

All of my immediate family was going to be together for the 4th, so my parents suggested we come out as well, even though it would be a short weekend trip.  I don't know the next time I will get to see everybody, so I'm glad we went.  I was also excited to have Darren experience my childhood favorite season of summer in the South.  We spent most of our time inside the house or in the pool.

On Sabbath, we took Sadie to Sabbath school which might be the highlight of her week.  She definitely is the superstar getting right up to the lady telling the story, singing the songs, riding in the "mission boat," etc.  

Darren is a fan of Sabbath school too.  I probably saw more friends at this service then any other one I could have gone to.  Apparently most of my childhood friends have children now.  Oh gosh, the pressure!

After church, a hoard of friends and family came over for lunch and ice cream...something I love that my family often puts together.  Then we went to the Cabbagedale fireworks.  We camped out on the church above where they were shooting them off so it wasn't too loud and theoretically it'd be easier to fight the traffic getting out.  Sadie loved, loved the fireworks and the neon glow stick my sister's friend gave her.  She kept running down the church road waving it around with my sister and I chasing behind her.

It took a good 30 minutes or so getting out of the parking lot.  But Darren and I had fun texting each other even though we were sitting next to each other.

Freedom means fireworks and bushy eyebrows.

On Sunday we relaxed, went downtown to see where my sister is moving, and ate some froyo at Cici's.  Bob and Mandy drove us past all the crazy tornado destruction on our way to Atlanta (So sad!  There were so many driveways to nothing).  Brad, Jess, and Sadie had a similar flight time, so we were able to hang in the airport together for an hour or so.  Of course, we followed Sadie around as she ran exploring the terminal and saying hi to other children.  Seeing the family and interacting with Sadie was worth our short time together.

Tennessee

Last Wednesday I traveled to Tennessee to be rejoined with all of my family and visit my 96 year old grandpa.  Darren couldn't leave until Thursday night (the poor fella took the red eye and got in Friday morning), so I took two buses all the way from Colorado Springs to the Denver airport.  

The public transportation was quite efficient and it was nice to be able to snooze in my bus seat through Denver morning traffic, but surprisingly it wasn't that great of a monetary deal.  It cost $11 to Denver and then another $12 to the airport one way.  If I had driven to the airport and parked it would have cost $10 a day to park (plus gas), so really it's only cheaper to take public transportation if a single person will be traveling more than four days ($46 if I'd gone by the bus round trip) or two people more than nine days ($92 for two people to take round trip public transport), or, as in my case, two people are traveling at different times.  Sorry for that boring tangent, but I was just shocked at how the U.S. doesn't make environmentally superior public transportation more affordable.  Granted, I do think the tickets are cheaper if you buy multiple tickets.  I believe that is why I saw so many business people actually utilizing the system.

Anyhoo, I made it to my flight with plenty of time.  We took off an hour late because someone had put too much fuel in the plane and they had to actually take out some fuel.  Thankfully I made my connection in Atlanta, but I had to sprint through the airport weaving around children and army folk Amazing Race style in order to get to my gate.

Thirty minutes later I was on native soil and saw my dad ready to greet me outside of airport security.  All I had eaten the entire day was a muffin from The Mate Factor and some cookies and pretzels on the plane, so he, my mother, Sadie and I picked up some pizza on the way home.  The rest of the night my family and I just relaxed, watched television, and the sisters and I got on three different laptops to play mindless computer games together (Frontierville, yes.  We are such nerds.).

On Thursday Brad got in super early from his redeye from California so he and Jess took a three hour nap while I did some scrapbooking consisting of random things from my senior year in high school.  I had to get in one project while I was home; it's sort of a tradition.   

Later in the evening my sisters, Brad, Joel and I went to hang out at Fox and Hound.  We consumed greasy food and played table shuffleboard for a couple hours.  It was extremely fun, but alas our girl/sister team lost its groove and the boys came out triumphant.

No, we are not doing a seance, just a simple sister mind merge for luck!  Don't ask.

We had never played this sort of shuffleboard, but an employee explained how it is done.  There are four  point scoring sections on the board.  If one slides their disc into the closest and largest section, he or she scores one point.  The next sections are two, three and four points respectively as they get further away from the shooter. The disc in the picture below is a four pointer.  Those were my points until one of the boys knocked it off the board.  If that happens, the points don't count.  A player can also earn points if he or she knocks off an opponent's disc and their personal disc stays on the board.  If they knock off two discs they get five points--but supposedly that is extremely difficult to do.

Friday morning Darren also arrived early from a redeye, but there was no chance of a nap for him.  Right after I picked him up from the airport I took him to the famously yummy and SLOW Aretha Frankensteins for breakfast.  My friend David lives close by, so he joined us for our three hour breakfast.  I really didn't think it would take so long on a weekday, but it did.  I felt bad that we took so much time out of David's workday, but we did enjoy good food and conversation.

Soon after we finished our meal, my family was on its way downtown to have lunch and go to the aquarium.  Darren and I killed time at Rock Creek, wandered through Renaissance Park, and picked up loads of free stickers, hats, and even water bottles at the River Rocks booths in Coolidge Park.  I admitted to most vendors that we weren't actually participating in any of the adventure games, but they still let us have the booty.

Mandy and Joel happened to be close by at Good Dog so we joined them, then Mandy, Darren and I met up with Brad, his parents, Jess, and Sadie at the aquarium.  

Otters are my favorite animals!  They are so playfully acrobatic.

Butterfly hitchhikers

Brad trying to get Sadie's attention

Denny would love to mountain bike these obstacles in front of the aquarium

By the time we got back to our van, Olivia was getting off work so we hung out with her at Rembrandts.

That night my grandpa and numerous other family joined us for our family's old tradition of cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate for supper (plus some other food).  Both my sisters and I used to make the rolls with my grandma, so we were nostalgic.

Saturday Darren and I went to church (where I realized I knew only three people...I guess most of my friends have moved on from that area), ate lunch with more heaps of family and then had our photos professionally taken together with my grandpa.  Darren and I then drove downtown to meet up with Dave and Kelli and then more friends at the 3 Sisters Bluegrass Festival.  Although the music was amazing, we spent more time chatting than listening to the music.

Sunday morning Darren and I made the trip out to go climbing at Tennessee Wall.  By the time both of us finished our first route, David joined us.  We were able to enjoy numerous crack climbs, and I had so much fun that I have since decided the crag is my favorite!

Darren and I had to leave on Monday afternoon, but we made quick trips to see my grandpa, father, and were even able to climb two routes at Sunset with Reed (Darren flashed Rusty's Crack faster and more smoothly then I've ever seen anyone climb it).  As normally happens I succeeded at packing in as much as I could during this short trip.  Somehow I've been able to do that all month while traveling out of Colorado three of the four weekends of September.  I guess I should be hermitty for a while--except I think we are going to Wyoming again this weekend.  Oops.

The East and The West

I just got back from an almost two week trip to visit friends, family, and especially my nearly 96 year old grandfather in Tennessee.  I found a flight directly into the city, and loved seeing all the greenery covering the hills.  Yes, and for the first time it truly hit me that the East does indeed have hills, not mountains.  Of course I knew this previously, but I felt the difference more this time after living in Colorado for the past few months.

I didn't do a lot of traveling or even spend an immense amount of time with friends due to the distractions of projects at my parents' house I've been wanting to finish for years.  I also had to study for boards.  The latter was only some what successful, but at least I tried.

During the time I did get to spend with family and friends, we climbed, ate at the Yellow Deli, saw some movies, went swimming, and did some creeking.  I really do miss having people close by.  That, I would say, is the biggest negative to where Darren and I are living now.  Besides lack of peeps we know, however, there are a lot of wonderful things in or near our current home:

1.  I can walk to town
2.  Capoeira
3.  Swing dancing
4.  Beautiful mountains
5.  Lots of wildlife (fox, bear, deer)
6.  Latte, our neighbor cat
7.  Our porch swing

Here's what Darren did while I was gone:

He climbed his first Colorado 14ers:  Mount Massive and the tallest 14er, Mount Elbert

A Hunk of Burnin' Graceland Love