{"id":251,"date":"2008-01-09T12:52:28","date_gmt":"2008-01-09T17:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=251"},"modified":"2008-01-09T12:52:28","modified_gmt":"2008-01-09T17:52:28","slug":"denver-part-the-second","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/denver-part-the-second\/","title":{"rendered":"Denver, Part the Second"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When we last left our heroine, she was promising to finish talking about her Denver trip. Well, as you&#8217;ve probably realized  by now, the &#8220;I&#8217;ll update tomorrow&#8221; promise was, like the cake (obscure video-game references for the win!), a lie. Hopefully, this entry will be worth the wait.<\/p>\n<p>So, like I said, I somehow managed to drop one of the rings during the wedding ceremony. Knowing my family, I will probably never, ever live that one down. They&#8217;ll tell the story at my wedding. They&#8217;ll probably tell it at my funeral. I did, however, fulfill an important role with my ring catapulting. Namely, to relax my stepbrother about his upcoming first dance. I&#8217;m sure that his thought process went something along the lines of, &#8220;Well, I might step on Vita&#8217;s toes, but at least I won&#8217;t send the rings flying.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Still, I offered the girl who had been videotaping the ceremony fifty bucks to edit out that part of the tape. She declined.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the evening was spent drinking (open bars are awesome), dancing and dipping various delicious things in the chocolate fountain. Toasts were given. My step-dad, David, gave a very touching speech. Most of the other toasts were about Vita, so her Dad talked all of the sisters into going up and saying something about Jeremy. I was happy to let his sister, Jessi, do all of the talking. I am excellent at lending moral support. Crap at holding onto rings, but great at moral support!<\/p>\n<p>Oh, I was also pretty good at putting the runner out before the ceremony. A job that I teased Kristian about when he was a groomsman. Mercilessly. My comeuppance, let me show it to you.<\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hopers\/2173684835\/\" title=\"IMG_8419.JPG by hopers, on Flickr\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2181\/2173684835_05d6e12ec1_m.jpg?resize=240%2C160\" width=\"240\" height=\"160\" alt=\"IMG_8419.JPG\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nBaby got back<br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n<p>We counted down at midnight. Kristian and I smooched. My sisters said &#8220;Ewwwwwww.&#8221; And then, at 12:30am, we all went home. I blame the jet-lag and not my total and utter lameness. Jet-lag. I just keep telling myself that.<\/p>\n<p>(Although my lame factor is definitely on the high side these days)<\/p>\n<p>I have to say, it was one of the nicest weddings that I&#8217;ve been to. Apologies to everyone else whose wedding I&#8217;ve been to. Yours were all lovely and fabulous and fun. In fact, I&#8217;ve never been to a wedding that I didn&#8217;t have a great time at. I think that this wedding just had that added New Years Eve &#8220;let&#8217;s have fun!&#8221; vibe. I mean, how can you <i>not<\/i> have fun drinking champagne all night? Plus, I was provided with a bunch of stuff that I was encouraged to dip in chocolate. That&#8217;s Hope heaven, right there. Some people make fun of chocolate fountains. I don&#8217;t understand those people. <\/p>\n<p>The next day, we had a lovely brunch for family and out of town guests. Kristian was, as usual, a superstar. Not only did he take my sisters and me to Costco the day before to get all of the brunchy supplies, he spent a large portion of the actual brunch frying bacon and cooking eggs. The whole family pitched in, really, it was a collaborative effort. Except for me. I slept in. I&#8217;m riding that boys coattails to slackerdom, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m doing.<\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hopers\/2170288901\/\" title=\"IMG_8498.JPG by hopers, on Flickr\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2311\/2170288901_e6ea420388_m.jpg?resize=160%2C240\" width=\"160\" height=\"240\" alt=\"IMG_8498.JPG\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nMy hero.<br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n<p>The rest of the day is a bit of a blur, but I believe that it involved a family trip to the movies (if you haven&#8217;t seen Juno, I highly recommend it) and a reoccurrence of the stomach queasiness. You&#8217;ll forgive me for being hazy on the details. It&#8217;s hard to remember a day that you mostly spent doubled over, clutching your tummy. And farting. Lots and lots of farting. I believe that there was also a bagel involved and possibly a family viewing of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the family left for the airport the next morning. Kristian and I had the whole house to ourselves, so we eagerly spent the morning&#8230;. packing up food. And cleaning. Great googily moogily, we are getting lame.<\/p>\n<p>It gets better, though! We packed ourselves a lunch and headed off to Red Rocks to do some hiking of our own. We did a mile and a half loop. Contrary to what the warning signs indicated, we didn&#8217;t see any rattlesnakes <i>or<\/i> mountain lions. You could argue that the weather, specifically the large amount of snow, was a factor in this. I&#8217;d like to think that the sheer force of my personality drove them off. I&#8217;m like Chuck Norris, but not a hardcore republican. At any rate, it was a hike that was undisturbed by lions. We also checked out the amphitheater there. Very cool. Someday, when I&#8217;m a famous rockstar, I&#8217;m going to play a show there. <\/p>\n<p>Hey! Stop laughing! It could happen!<\/p>\n<p>On the way back to Denver, we took a slight detour&#8230; through the Coors brewery. How can you turn down free beer? The tour involved a large amount of Coors propaganda (The highlight? Kristian asking about the difference between Coors Light and Keystone Light. The tour-guide&#8217;s answer? Basically, marketing). Then, at the end, they gave us beer. I had a Blue Moon. I was seriously tempted to have a Zima. Why? Because I find it amusing that they are still making Zima. That means that, somewhere, there are people who still drink Zima. I would like to know more about these people.<\/p>\n<p>Kristian had three beers and was totally fine to drive home. I had two and had to work really hard to keep myself from taking a nap. It&#8217;s probably a good thing that I avoided the Zima temptation.<\/p>\n<p>I have pictures of both Red Rocks and the Coors tour, but I still need to upload them. Bad Hope! Bad!<\/p>\n<p>Anyways, the rest of the day was spent packing up and hanging out at the airport. We also had a final dinner with Jeremy, where we split a pitcher of water and I asked him questions about vasectomies (he&#8217;s a urologist). Oh, and what sort of emergencies would require the services of a urologist) he was on-call that night. An appropriate dinner conversation if there ever was one.<\/p>\n<p>So, that was our trip in a nutshell. It was a lot of fun. It was great to get away for a bit. It was wonderful to spend so much time with my family. It was especially wonderful to spend so much time with my family and <i>not<\/i> want to kill them by the end.<\/p>\n<p>Coming next: 80th birthday party pictures and creepy old man stories. I bet you can&#8217;t wait!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we last left our heroine, she was promising to finish talking about her Denver trip. Well, as you&#8217;ve probably realized by now, the &#8220;I&#8217;ll update tomorrow&#8221; promise was, like&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-photos","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-43","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}