Weekend in Colorado

In just a few short hours I will board a plane and be on my way home. Weekends in Colorado always go by way too fast! It also didn't help that a tornado warning at the airport delayed my Thursday night flight by 3 hours and caused the entire airport to spend some time in the restrooms. Yeah, just picture that - every woman in the airport piled into the restroom - all of them on their cell phones. It was the highlight of my night (sense the sarcasm). Ah well, I eventually made it to Denver only a few hours after my original arrival time...that's all that really matters.

Friday my friend Kayla and I spent the afternoon with her cousin Mandy - also a friend of mine from college, that is now a mother of 2 (the youngest is only a week old). We had a great time catching up and reliving old memories. From there we spent a relaxing afternoon shopping for ski gear for Kayla, grabbing a late lunch and just hanging out. We headed to downtown Colorado Springs later in the evening to have dinner with a group of Kayla's friends at one of their houses. I met a girl there that was from Iowa, so we had fun talking about our homeland (and how much we love it no matter what anyone else might say). Her friend made an incredibly delicious dinner, and I ate entirely too much, so we took a long walk around the Broadmoor before calling it a night and heading home.

Saturday we got up bright & early to head up to Breckenridge. The forecasts were calling for major snowstorms, but thankfully we didn't drive through anything too terrible. It ended up being absolutely perfect weather for skiing - cold but not too cold, snowing but not so much that it affected the visibility, and a perfect coating of powder on the ground. I skied with a long-time friend of mine who is much much better than I am, and although I'm not sure if I'm improving, I appreciated his patience! I had so much fun and figure I can only get better...at least I hope so! Practice makes perfect, right?? Ah well, even if I never improve, I still love it! I have a puffy lip and the bridge of my nose is pretty dang sore from a fantastic wipe-out. I knew it was swollen within a matter of minutes, but had NO idea how large my upper lip had gotten until we got back to the car and I took a look at it in the mirror! I started laughing so hard! It was HUGE! Thankfully it didn't stay that way for long, but I was pretty proud of my battle wound. I fought the mountain and won. At least I like to think of it that way :).

We headed back to Colorado Springs and met up with Kayla's boyfriend for dinner at Zio's - my favorite restaurant from back when my brother Ryan was in school at ORU. Although I was disappointed they no longer had crayons on the tables (i love doodling while waiting for my food!), the rest was just as I remembered it - deeeelicious. We headed back to Kayla's house to watch some tv, but after I changed into my pj's and responded to a few emails...I fell asleep! Apparently I was pretty wiped out.

This morning we made it to early service at Kayla's church, Woodmen Chapel. Afterwards I met up with another long-time friend and her incredibly adorable little girl, Olivia, for lunch. She was sweet and goofy and at one point crawled under the table to sit next to me. She showed me her shoes, and later her puffy pig and goat named "bubblehead", which she proceeded to put on my head. Haha! SUCH a cutie! I had a great time catching up and I hope it won't be another 10 years before I see them again.

So, now I'm curled up in bed since Kayla's furnace is down (being fixed as we speak) making her house is only 49 degrees inside. It's a bit chilly! We leave in about an hour for Denver and then back to my every day life until Wednesday night...next stop, Florida.

I'm going to miss Colorado.