August...
Wait, August?! I thought it was still, like, April? And I only just got over the hurdle of remembering to sign the date "2022" instead of "2021". Yet while my brain's stuck a few months behind, Disney parks are trying to pull us several months forward: Hannah and I watched a Disney Food Blog video this week that showed Halloween decorations in the parks already. Can we just, like, pause and appreciate the current season so my brain has time to catch up?! Sigh.. And yet, as I prepped for this post by listing out all the things I wanted to cover, I realized it must be the middle of the year because of all the things we've done since Hannah's post on our Italy trip!
Just a couple weeks after we got back, we hosted my family for a weekend. Though we'd already hosted Hannah's sisters and mom in March, I was really excited to host my family in our beautiful new house - the first place we could call our own! It still shocks me sometimes when I'm walking around the house and remember we own it. I mean sure, if you think about it in terms of the percent of our mortgage we've paid off we'd only own, like, the guest bedroom closet, but thankfully that's not how ownership works - our names are on the deed! But I digress...
We had a pretty low-key weekend with my family, but enjoyed every bit of it! The theme for the weekend was, "look how close we are to all this great stuff!" We enjoyed the nice weather on a long walk through some of the open space trails near our house; we went bowling; we went to an awesome German beer hall called Prost Brewing, followed by a movie at the AMC right next door; and we had a delicious brunch at Denver Biscuit Company featuring their flagship "biscuit cinnamon rolls". We also celebrated Nathan's birthday with one of my mom's legendary chocolate cakes. Hannah and I gifted him a Little Man Ice Cream shirt so that, wherever he goes, he can evangelize the best ice cream this side of... well, everything :-)
Just a week later we hosted Hannah's parents, too! We took them to another of our favorite breweries called Spice Trade, where we paired our beer with a handful of delicious appetizers: Caesar brussel sprouts with chunks of braised pork; loaded sweet potato waffle fries; dry-rub wings; and elote dip. We also assembled a really cool National Parks puzzle they brought with them - in record time, I might add. We enjoy sharing our love of both National Parks and puzzles with them!
The last week of May, we got a massive snowstorm. Yes, you read that right. That's Denver weather for you! Over 6 inches of very wet, heavy snow at our house. The weight of all that snow broke a bunch of massive tree branches all over town! Thankfully our trees were healthy enough to bend without breaking, but some of the limbs that are normally at eye-level were literally touching the ground at their tips! And our neighbor has an aspen tree in their front yard that looked like it had been peeled like a banana even after the snow melted off. I wish I'd taken some pictures outside of Snapchat!
Just a few days later, Hannah and I celebrated our fifth anniversary with a little staycation in downtown Denver. It was such a fun treat! We stayed at the Hyatt Centric, which was a beautiful hotel right near 16th Street Mall, so we could easily walk everywhere we wanted to go! We started with drinks at Union Lodge No. 1, which had a cool "pre-prohibition era" vibe. Then we teetered and tottered a few blocks down to Foraged for some fantastic Asian cuisine. The next morning we wrapped it up with brunch at Syrup, then drove up to Boulder for some hiking in the Flatirons! It was the perfect way to celebrate a milestone that has come unbelievably quickly!
In early June we drove out to Salina, Kansas, to visit my grandparents, aunt, and uncle! Though it was a quick 2-day trip, we had a great time. We visited a new place that just opened up called "The Garage", which showcased a ton of beautiful old cars that had been leant by local collectors. It also had a virtual reality room where you could try to weld panels together and apply a paint job to a car door, which underscored the level of craftsmanship that goes into refurbishing old cars! Then we drove to a nearby town called Abilene - the childhood home of President Eisenhower. We spent a couple hours learning about Ike's history at a very well done museum, then enjoyed a great outdoor concert put on by the local community band. The next morning we had a fantastic buffet brunch at the Salina Country Club, then hit the road to head back to Denver. It was great to catch up with family we hadn't seen in awhile!
The next weekend, we ventured into the mountains and spent a weekend in Twin Lakes at an Airbnb with four of our friends: Mel, Mason, Chris, and Emily. We did a beautiful hike along one of the lakes, which none of us appreciated more than Scout (Chris and Emily's dog). She went tearing up and down the shoreline, prancing through the water and enthusiastically fetching whatever we threw for her! We also played games back at the Airbnb, including some extremely competitive pingpong - I'm convinced Chris and Mason moonlight as professional pingpong players. It actually inspired us to get a pingpong table in our own basement! Hannah and I haven't played much on our own yet, but it's already been great entertainment when we have friends over.
In mid-June we spent a four-day weekend in Arizona to visit our families. We went bowling again with my family, and Nathan, Dad, and I were on fire! I think we each had only 2 open frames the entire second game, and we each finished above 170. Then we celebrated Father's Day with an incredible meal at Oak on Camelback, followed by another of my mom's legendary cakes! One morning that weekend, we took our oldest niece, Paisley, out for brunch at First Watch. It was so fun! She's such a mature little girl - she can hold a conversation with adults so easily! It's crazy to see her in that light, having watched her grow up since she was born just a couple months after Hannah and I started dating. Later that weekend we got together at Brian and Terrisa's house for an afternoon having fun in the pool. I played a game with all the kids where I try to keep a tennis ball away from all of them while they climb all over me; and once they wrestle it away from me, I toss them around until I find it. This time it devolved into me just throwing them as high as I could off the hot tub ledge and into the pool! While we were there, we also snuck in some time with our Grandma Clark, which we treasure since she's unable to visit us in Denver.
For the 4th of July, we traveled to Georgia for the highlight trip of the summer: a week with Hannah's immediate and extended family (the Moores) on Lake Oconee! It was an extremely relaxing trip, but still packed with fun memories! We rented a Vrbo that was an absolute mansion of a property: it had a beautiful pool, a movie theater, a private pond with an adjacent 2-bedroom cabin, a pontoon boat on a lakeside dock, a horse stable, and plenty of other separate little areas to spend time. That last detail was an essential feature of the property, because there were 29 of us, including 11 kids age 11 or younger! We spent the whole week doing whatever we felt like - cruising around the lake window shopping other mansions, tubing, reading, napping, playing billiards and board games, swimming in the pool... the list goes on! One of our favorite pastimes was doing diving catches of a tennis ball off the side of the pool. We navigated the food situation pretty seamlessly overall: each night, two couples were responsible for dinner for the whole group, such that everyone only had to worry about one dinner that week. Before we flew out of Atlanta, Hannah and I explored town a bit with Bobby and Emily. We drove by their childhood home, walked around the Centennial Olympic Park, went to the National Center for Human and Civil Rights, and got drinks at a local cidery. It was a fantastic trip!
Toward the end of July, Hannah and I drove out to southwestern Colorado for a weekend in the mountains. Friday night we drove to Gunnison and stayed with one of Hannah's closest friends from school, Stacey. It was great to catch up with her and meet her boyfriend while we ate pizza and played Catan! Stacey's a formidable Catan-player, but this time Hannah swooped in and took the W! Saturday morning we drove out to Ouray for camping and hiking in the San Juan range, which is (in my opinion) the most beautiful mountain range in Colorado. Fun fact: it's the mountain range pictured on the Coors Light cans! We originally planned to hike a 14er called Mt. Sneffels on Sunday morning, but the forecast changed and Saturday looked like our best shot at it, so we spontaneously decided to hike it Saturday! Problem was, we got a much later start than usual. By the time we got to within 500 feet of the summit, storm clouds had rolled in and it began raining. It was a tough call, but we elected to turnaround so we wouldn't risk our safety with lightning. Still, it was a drop-dead gorgeous hike, and well worth the trip! Saturday night we camped with a campfire for the first time in almost three years - finally Colorado had gotten enough rain to permit campfires, at least for that weekend! We made grilled cheese sandwiches over the fire, and the rain held out for a peaceful night of camping. Sunday morning we hiked the Ouray Perimeter Trail, and then drove back to Denver through seven hours of non-stop rain. We're grateful for the rain, but it forced us to focus a bit harder on driving than we normally would, which was exhausting for a full day of driving!
The day after we got back from the San Juans, I hiked the "Manitou Incline" with my team from work as part of an offsite team-building activity. It's a set of stairs that take you straight up the side of a mountain outside of Manitou Springs (near Colorado Springs) - over 2000 feet of ascension in less than a mile! It was challenging, but fun, and we rewarding ourselves afterward with a "Five Guys vs In-N-Out taste test". The taste test featured a double-patty burger, fries, and a shake (each) from both places, and we ate in a neutral location while we filled out a 30-factor evaluation of both locations. I was the only person to finish both burgers and both shakes, and I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed of that. It was tough work, but hey, someone had to do this for the sake of science! Ultimately In-N-Out was the majority favorite, but I was partial to Five Guys (though with an asterisk of: it's twice the cost of In-N-Out, so I'm still more likely to go to In-N-Out over Five Guys). It was a fun day - I'm extremely grateful to work with people I enjoy spending time with outside of work like that!
Not to be outdone, Hannah partook in her own food-and-exercise combo challenge later that week: the "beer mile". The idea is, you drink a beer, then run a quarter mile, drink another beer, run another quarter mile... until you've consumed four beers and ran a mile! Her coworkers got together at City Park for the event, and Hannah originally planned to only participate as a spectator. But one of her coworkers wanted to split the effort with someone (relay style), so she rose to the challenge. Instead of beer, she had one hard seltzer and one regular seltzer, but still, that's two carbonated drinks in half a mile! She reportedly felt like crap while running, but she didn't look it - she had an epic finish in which she passed the next closest person on the final lap, despite the competitor's cries of "Are you kidding me?! No! Hannah! Don't do it!!" It didn't hold a candle to the overall victor though - he did the whole thing in less than 10 minutes. Coloradans, man...
The only other major event lately has been bittersweet: my Great Uncle Bill passed away a few weeks ago. He went peacefully in his sleep, and he lived a full life - he had just turned 90 in January and recently expressed that he felt "ready". So while it's a bit of a cliche in these situations, I really do believe he's happier now, especially because he's with his wife, Betty. I think he'd also be joyful to see all the family and friends that came together and reconnected at the funeral. My mom flew out from Arizona; my grandparents and aunt and uncle drove out from Salina; and dozens of others got together in Longmont to celebrate his life together. He was an incredibly kind man, and we'll miss him. Soon after Hannah and I moved to Denver in 2017, he took us to Rocky Mountain National Park to show us his favorite places, and he brought a picnic lunch complete with a red-and-white-checkered table cloth! It was a picture-perfect example of his kind heart, and it felt like such a warm welcome to the beautiful state we now call home! Rest in peace, Uncle Bill.
