staycation : part 1

Hello there!!!

This post is the first in what may end up being a handful of posts about our last week! Tyler took his Step 2 Boards for med school last Friday, and Friday evening marked the beginning of our vacation time together. That's right --- the med student and the PA student finally have overlapping time off!

For our vacation, we considered traveling to a variety of places. Up to Napa, down to Florida, up to DC...all fun places, but all requiring lots of effort to plan. After the anxiety-ridden year we've had, the last thing I wanted to do was get stressed out over vacation planning. Then, when I was looking at our lengthy list of Denver-To-Do's...and an idea came to me! Instead of finding flights and planning a vacay in an unknown city, how about we stay in Denver at some fun hotels and spend some time and money in the city! We are usually pretty frugal and don't have the time to do fun things locally, so this was totally out of the ordinary for us to just relax and do WHATEVER we want here!

Stoked about the idea, I immediately made some reservations at hotels I've always wanted to stay at and looked up the city's best happy hours --- because, let's face it, Tyler and I go where the happy hours are. WE. LOVE. HAPPY HOUR. 


From here on out, the last 5 days will just be referred to as Staycation --- despite the fact that my computer is insisting that "staycation" is not a word. 


Staycation began Friday evening with a trip to the dog park, dinner from Bono's Pit Bar-B-Q (I don't blame you for being skeptical of this Aurora BBQ joint, still sounds sketch to me and I have eaten it!), and Iron Man (because we realized we loved The Avengers, yet hadn't seen any of the superheroes' individual movies!). Not exactly a rowdy night, but it was time together, at long last! 


The real fun started on Saturday when we headed to Fort Collins to watch my baby sister graduate from high school! Everyone who has younger siblings has always said, "Ohmyword I can't believe that so-and-so is old enough to graduate highschooooool!!!" First of all, no one actually says ohmyword. My situation must be different, because I kept waiting for that moment where I couldn't believe Linds was moving on in the world. But the truth is, for better or for worse, I've always kind of ignored the 9-year age difference between us (minor detail) and treated her a lot older than she is. So I was actually kind of like, "Finally!!!"


Got a little RMHS pride on at the graduation, but after we were about an hour in... I was kind of over it. And let's just say the speeches were less than awesome. Like really far less than awesome. Watched the tassels get turned, watched the balloons rain down on the 500 seniors, and watched them fling their caps up into the air. 

{How great are these graduation cap toppers my mom and sister made for her party cupcakes?!?! Love it} 

Headed back to my parents' house and the mad dash for last minute party preparations began. I have to hand it to my mom, she had all the details planned - and she rattled off our duties like a pro. Hearty food, laughter with family, and a couple of memorial day weekend beers made it a blast! One issue, however --- I decided to stop being the annoying family member with the camera in everyone's faces, so we didn't really get any extended family photos...and my mom made it very clear that while I am in fact annoying at family gatherings, I certainly am expected to be the event paparazzi and to never fail her again! haha. Said with love, of course :)


At least we got this shot ---

Staycation Chronicles to be continued...
Cheers!


PS --- you know you're a nerd when you can no longer read the words "vacation" or "staycation" without seeing the word "cation" in there...thanks a lot, biochemistry...