Life In Colorado: Busy as a Bee

This week marks the start of my two months of insanity. I have so much going on until Thanksgiving so I'll do my best to keep you posted.

The Rockies season ends on Thursday so John has been soaking up as much Rockies as possible. Last week John and our friend Laura went to the Rockies game. During the game he got picked to do the Coca-Cola Challenge which is probably the coolest and hardest challenge at the Rockies stadium. The challenge goes like this. John starts at the outfield wall in left field. He has 20 seconds to run to 2nd base, put 2nd base in the ground, and then run through 1st base. It's almost impossible to do in 20 seconds but everyone runs their heart out. Unfortunately John was just 3 steps short when the time ran out but he got a nice Rockies Coca-Cola T-shirt to commemorate the experience.

Thanks to Laura for taking this picture of John waiting to go out on the field.

On Friday night I went to John's co-ed softball league for the first time. I must say, as a woman and former softball athlete myself, I was very disappointed and a little offended by the league rules for women. One of rules that I was offended by was the home plate rule. If a woman baserunner is running home to score then she must run towards a chalked line near the backstop of the field instead of running directly across home plate. Another rule that seemed very degrading to women was the base on balls rule. If a woman is up to bat and she walks, the batting team automatically gets another runner on base. This means, the woman who original walked will advance to second base and the batting team will get to put another woman (it has to be a woman) on first. All in all I felt like this league was kind of degrading towards women and implied that women cannot play athletics. However as the game went on I quickly realized that many of the women in this league do not even know how to throw a ball much less hit it past the pitcher so I decided to try not to be offended.

On Saturday Melissa and I drove up to Fort Collins (think driving from Liberty, MO to Gardner, KS) for some major shopping. While I was driving to Melissa's house to pick her up that morning there were a TON of hot air balloons in the sky. I caught a few pictures of them as I drove by.

This balloon just barely missed the highway when it landed.

I wish you could see the mountains a little better but it's still a good picture I think.

Before Melissa and I left for our shopping extravaganza her son Awesome (aka Ian) wanted to show us how he can ride the skateboard. He got the skateboard out all by himself and with a little help from dad got ready to go. The good news is that I got this picture of him riding the board. The bad news is that right after I took the picture he face planted onto the garage floor. But like a true boy he got right back up and didn't even seem phased.

A few weeks ago while I was home my mom and I went shopping as well. While we were at Macy's my mom tried really hard to get me to try on this dress that I didn't really like. I thought it looked too much like Little House on the Prairie so I declined to try it on. On Saturday while Melissa and I were shopping through the racks of clothes she pulls out the EXACT same dress my mom tried to get me to buy. I laughed so hard when she showed me that dress that we had to take a picture for my mom. Unfortunately Melissa didn't buy the dress but at least we gave my mom her wish.

My friends Beth and Graham also brought their son Brady to his first Baker football game a few weeks ago. Brady wore his Baker t-shirt that I bought him and had a great time until the airhorn went off which he happened to be sitting next to. All in all he was a trooper through the whole game and stayed up until the very end. Last week Brady went to the Zoo for the first time and he got to ride the train with Grandma and Grandpa. The picture below is of Brady going through the tunnel at the Zoo. It's priceless.

Also while I was at home I got a chance to visit with my friend Cara Sue. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at Subway and when we came back to her house she had the best surprise for me. CHIPPER!! I absolutely LOVE Cara's dogs and I am lucky enough that she lets see them and hang out with them whenever I want. Chipper had a brand new haircut for the surprise too!