Your mom and I took a trip to Denver to celebrate Papa's 90th birthday! We stayed at my mom's and spent just about the entire week with family, as everyone came together for a veritable reunion to honor the Padalinski patriarch. Admittedly we wore ourselves out, but it was a great family trip. (We're thinking our next longer vacation is going to have to be just the two of us, though).
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| I always end up taking pictures like this at airports, I guess because they always offer great long views and the excitement of the coming trip makes me a shutterbug. |
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| The first night of the trip was dedicated to an overnighter in Fort Collins, a northern Colorado town that is brimming with breweries. I'd never been during any previous Colorado trip, so when my sister, Shannon, and her awesome boyfriend, Andrew, picked us up from the airport, we left straight for it. First up was the internationally renowned New Belgium, where we probably had the best beers. Their classic Fat Tire, an amber ale, was amazingly good fresh from the source. I know it could have been the magic of the moment, but that beer was utterly fantastic. |
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| Andrew regaled us with a remarkable performance outside New Belgium. |
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| Another well-regarded brewery I insisted we visit was Odell. My beer photo hobby was in full swing! |
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| Outside yet another brewery they had a little charcoal pit to toast marshmallows and make smores! |
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| All told we visited five breweries that day. An excellent showing! Eventually we made our way into downtown to live it up. Shannon and Andrew got ahold of the camera when I was using the restroom! |
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| Fishbowl drinks and swings at this interesting little dive. |
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| Shannon and I try to look "hard"while showing off all of our brewery and bar stamps. I look pretty tough, right? |
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| The next morning we had an amazing brunch at The Kitchen, a swanky joint in downtown. |
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| The night of Independence Day we joined Shannon's friend Caitlin at her house for a barbecue. She had cornhole and this odd game set up. The object was to toss these ropes with balls on each end and get them to wrap around one of three rods, the highest being the one worth most points. The celebration here was fitting, as it was not easy, and these two nailed it! |
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| Shannon and Andrew taught everyone a lesson in beer pong. Look at that poise, that focus! |
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| Street fireworks, of course. |
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| The next day Papa turned 90 and we trekked to Westminster to celebrate at Nana and Papa's home. The weather was gorgeous, and I snapped this out the car window on our way. |
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| Hee, they do have some cute moments. |
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| Nana, Papa, their two kids, and their grandkids. A surprise visit was yet to happen, though! |
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| My cousin, Nick, and his family surprised us all by showing up! They came all the way from Hong Kong, China, where he has been working over the past year. |
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| The next day we joined my mom and Shannon to explore some newer Denver attractions we'd never seen before. This was Union Station, a train station which has recently been updated and turned into a beautiful little market with some wonderful places to eat and get a drink. |
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| Similarly, we visited The Source, another new, hip market with some cool places to enjoy a meal. |
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| My sister and my mom, as we enjoyed brunch at The Source. |
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| My mom treated us to a round at "Canvas and Cocktails," a cool event where you get a canvas, some paint, some drinks and step-by-step instruction on painting a selected scene. It was a blast! |
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| Not a bad representation of the original! Of course my favorite was your mom's, but I thought mine turned out pretty nicely as well. |
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| One day exploring downtown the sky opened up! We are definitely not used to downpours, coming from California in its fifth year of drought. |
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| At my mom's apartment, Howee, Shannon's "apple-head"chihuahua was still as feisty and lanky as ever. |
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| Moments from your mom and my wedding were proudly displayed around my mom's place. |
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| It was wonderful to see memories of these times being cherished like this. |
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| Joe is getting old and fatter all the time. At this point he needs help getting up onto my mom's couch like this. Of course he is routinely obliged, and he still loves a good neck rub. |
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| The brewery adventures were not over! Some really nice places had opened up in the neighborhoods where I grew up. This was Coda Brewing, one place with a particularly interesting design. |
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| As has become tradition, we spent our last evening again with Nana and Papa, and she cooked us some classic German cuisine. The older guys played the card game Watten, we ate like kings, and enjoyed a huge thunderstorm that drenched the back yard. It was a nice end to a long and adventurous (and tiring) trip! |
