The weekend before Christmas, Rob and I decided to take a little road trip out to his grandparent's house in Colorado. We were glad to have a few friends join us for the weekend and had a blast just hanging out around town, drinking wine by the fire, and playing lots of cards. Robby and John went skiing, but the rest of us didn't make it. :) Seemed like a lot of effort to get dressed and go skiing when we could be out enjoying the unseasonably warm weather (which made for crappy snow conditions...another reason to not go:)). So instead, we hung out around town getting soup at our favorite restaurant The Red Onion, drinking hot chocolate, and eating our weight in ginger molasses cookies from Paradise Bakery...YUMMMMMM! I took some pictures, so I will let those tell the story of our trip...the trip that ended up lasting a day longer than planned. :)
First up...check out this view!!! You can see why we were perfectly content just hanging out at the house.
John snapped this picture of me while he was playing with my camera...this is what I did the majority of the time I was at the house...I could stare at that view all day long. Beautiful!
Pretty pic of Amber...
Eventually we got around and headed downtown. We stopped by Paradise Bakery for a hearty breakfast of coffee (hot chocolate for me...its my favorite!) and cookies!
While I may look bundled up....it was so warm I could have done without the coat (and I did the next day!). You can tell how warm it is by the fact that Robby is just wearing a fleece pull over and is perfectly content. :)
Mary and Tony drove us out there in their big SUV...made for a very easy, comfortable trip out! Thanks, guys!
While we were getting distracted by all the pretty things in the various home stores, the boys ducked in to the Red Onion for a drink.
We decided that seemed appealing and decided to join them as well!
That night we went back to the house to hang out before dinner. I snapped a few pictures of everyone out on the balcony before we lost all the good light.
Amber and John are living in Denver right now and the mountains seem to be suiting them quite well.
I told them to switch angle for lighting reasons...and as they were rearranging, caught this. I seriously love how much he loves my friend.
I took a few of Mary and Tony also, although my favorites of them were the ones I took the next night.
These were the ones we took the next night. Gotta love that golden hour light!
Mary getting her model hair on. :)
And then one Tony took while playing around with my camera. I think I almost have them convinced to buy a DSLR of their own! :)
And finally, here are a few John took of Robby and I. :)
This picture is appearing darker now than it did when I first edited a few things on it, but as you can see, Robby and I are both showing off our squint-y eyes. I think Ruthie is right, our kids have no shot at getting big, beautiful, open eyes. :)
Here is their little family! They brought their bunny, Louise, along for the trip! Everybody just fell in love with her (cute, furry little thing that hops...how could you not!). Rob had a grand old time chasing her around the house, which usually left her cowering in a corner like the next picture down.
We all would take turns holding the bunny! She is just so cuddle-y! :)
We had big plans to get a group picture at some point, but one person was always in the shower or in town or something. So I guess we'll have to just settle for this picture of all the girls in front of the fireplace. This was just supposed to be a test shot for the timer, for the group picture that didn't happen. :)
I love that fireplace. We had a fire burning in it every moment that we were in that room. I loved it!
On Sunday we all had the best of intentions to ski. Like I mentioned earlier though...that didn't happen. Only Rob and John made it out to the mountains. I did, however, get all my ski gear on (which is half the battle) before changing my mind...so we took this picture so that years from now I can look back and pretend like I did go skiing on this trip. :)
Late Saturday night Alan and his friends showed up. Robby and his friends always used to go skiing the week before Christmas. Unfortunately, they had to drop their annual Christmas ski trip due to real world obligations. Alan and his friends picked up right where they left off and now go that week as well. They adjusted their trip a few days so we could have the house, but we still overlapped a few days. Fine by us though. The boys were gone all day skiing, and at night they did things to entertain us like have competitions to see who could eat a pound of spaghetti (they weighed a pound dry...then they cooked it. That is a lot of spaghetti!).
The next Monday we took off to head back home, only to be thwarted in our efforts. We knew we may hit a winter storm, but were hoping to just power through. However, the roads had other plans. After seeing at least fifteen cars and semis not just on the side of the road, but ROLLED on the side of the road, we decided to pull off in Limon, gas up, and evaluate our options.
A pic from the gas station while we were talking to our parents and checking the weather. You can't see much beyond the gas station because of the blowing snow.
We realized there had been a bad accident (a prison van rolled, killing two)and that traffic was stopped about 10 miles up ahead. After realizing I-70 was probably going to close when the sun when down, and knowing that given our current speed (between 35-40 mph), we wouldn't make it too far before that, we decided to get a hotel room and bunker down.
We played lots of cards that night (Rob and I are obsessed with playing Pitch...anybody want to set up a card games date?), watched the KU game, and ate the cookies I had intended to take to my friend Molly in KC that night (sorry Molls...they were yummy!).
(It was a close game...but Tony and I came out on top! WOO!)
The next morning we headed out and managed to time everything perfectly, so the roads were opening up just as we were getting to them. Really, by the next day a lot of the ice had melted. The real problem area was the 60 miles around Hays...the roads had clearly been snow-packed and were still not quite clear. We saw lots of cars on the side of the roads and it was pretty bumpy there for a while. But we made it home...a day later than planned, but better safe than sorry!
I'll be back soon with a big room renovation! :)
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