The meeting...

The meeting of Tom's parents, his sister and her family with my parents went well! Phew! We had a fun weekend. I took that Friday off and showed my parents around the farm and to Same Cafe for lunch. My dad got to see my apartment, and my mom saw the transformation from a year earlier when she came to help me move in. Marie and company went to the Rockies game Friday night, while the six of us went out for a nice dinner - the first meeting. We had a great time, good conversation, and some laughs, too. Saturday the sky looked like it would open up at any minute. We nixed the bbqing in the park plan, as that would only be a temptation to the sky. My parents came over and then the Vigils and Salas family rotated through the place. After church we went to Same Cafe and set up for a fantastic party. Many friends joined us, our parents toasted us, and we got to sample Tom's first batch of mead. A great night...a lot of fun! Sunday was pretty low key as we hung out here in the morning. Marie and family came and hung out for a while before they had to hit the road home, and my parents spent the afternoon hanging out. It was father's day, so we planned to take my parents out for sushi at our favorite place - Mr. Sushi at Wadsworth and Bowles in Littleton. We drove all the way over - the opposite direction of the airport, mind you, only to find they were not opening until the time we needed to leave for the airport. One other place in the vicinity that we haven't tried was also closed. We got stuck in traffic and ended up having to drop them off at the airport without lunch or dinner. To make it worse, the airport was crowded, security lines were long, the brew pub they found to grab a bite had run out of hamburger buns for my dad's order, and the icing on the cake: the flight was an hour late. I felt rotten for not getting to treat them after the treated us to such a wonderful weekend - both of our parents were and are extra great! How lucky we are to know we have them behind us...

the countdown nears its end...

Well, with all the cleaning and such, I forgot to countdown.  Now it seems mere minutes away!  My parents flew in this morning.  We had a terrific time wandering around.  I showed them the farm, and they met Deb & Faatma.  We made it to SAME Cafe, where we will have an engagement party tomorrow after church.  And then home!  My mom helped me get a little settled in post-surgery last June, so she was delighted to see how things turned out.  My dad likes the place, too, though cable to watch the US Open was lacking.  We went over to the hotel where Tom's family is staying to drop off tickets to tonight's baseball game, so they've all met.  It was fun to sit and talk for a bit before I took my parents up the road to their hotel to tuck them in for an afternoon nap.  When Tom gets cleaned up from work, we'll rendezvous with our parents for a dinner out!  Oh goodie...

Jazz!!!

It's more than a genre; it's Sunday evenings for the next several weeks (as long as we're here)!!  Hooray, it's that time when the picnic blanket and frisbee come out.  Tom walked me to the park to meet Mary.  We brought cherries to share.  The frisbee was used to direct our walk to our resting place.  I would like to believe my throws were much more on course, but Tom can throw it a whole lot further than I can!  It was a fun walk, sort of like the dotted lines in the Family Circus cartoons when one of the kids walks all over kingdom come from the curb to the front door.  Anywho...jazz anyone?

the countdown

I really should be writing about how much fun Tom and I had in Portland with the myriad of family parties.  Or maybe about all the tornado sitings, which actually started while we were in Portland (I didn't want to leave the house to do laundry on Sunday because the sirens were sounding every five minutes).  Yikes! But even more exciting is the fury of housecleaning to prepare to welcome Tom's family and my parents to Denver on Friday!  I haven't even lived here for a year, and oddly enough I find that I am still nesting - putting up the plant hooks this week, I hope.  And I just organized my art supplies, so they don't have to take up six shelves, making room for mead-making supplies and gardening odds and ends.  I am so excited.  Or as Tom puts it, I am beginning to get frantic...

Pictures!!

I finally have the coveted material of blogs...pictures. I mean, everyone can write about their days, meal, or upsets, but images are so much better. So here are a few from Tom's and I my trip to Portland. Sadly, our return to Denver was eventfully long...arriving at the airport in Portland before the plane had even left Denver to pick us up! I got home a bit after 3 am, terribly disappointed in my potential sleep time, relieved I finished my book on the plane. (So these pictures are from Auggie's girlfriend Jean's graduation party in the park....the Ford family has grown exponentially in the last year.) A game of washers...between sibs and the to-be bro-in-laws And the family with sibs in order (age not height).

the fear...

Do you ever get the feeling that the clocks are all wrong, you weren't paying attention, and you might have missed the boat?  Well, it was sort of like that...   Tom & I are in Portland this weekend visiting family.  We threw a party for Miki & Marty last night - for all the young friends, rather than a bachelorette party.  It was all fun & games, plus wine-tasting.  We spent the day shopping and prepping food, and then, voila!  We had a terrific time.  The "newlyweds" game went over with lots of laughter.  About twenty bottles of wine were finished off.  And we got to sleep in today.   But getting her Thursday was the reason for the fear.  Our last two trips were wrought with snowstorms - in Portland at Christmas and in Denver for Grandma's funeral.  We'd checked the weather a few times, confirming that there was severe rain expected, but nothing to slow us down.  We planned to carry our bags on the planes, so we printed our boarding passes and lounged around Denver a little longer than usual (for our usual 9:40 pm flight to Portland that lands at 11:15 pm - we've flown it three times already).  The parking lots were full at the airport, so we had to drive a little further into the boonies to another lot, waited and drove in a little further on the bus.  Security was a breeze, and we took up residence in our favorite quiet section overlooking the terminal.  We heard on the loud speaker that stormy weather was causing a flight to California to board and leave early and wished that we would befall the same luck.  A couple chapters of our books later, we looked at the time and saw that the plane would preboard in about 5 minutes.  We turned back to our books to the sound of "Will Ms Victoria ford and Mr Thomas Vigil please come to gate A26?"  Holy cow!!!  Were we that lucky to be leaving early and didn't hear them announce that they were boarding????  We grabbed our bags and ran down to the gate.  Three different gates occupied the corner of the terminal, so people were lined up in every direction.  A little out of breath, we threw our boarding passes on the counter and announced our arrival to find out that a family had been seated in our row and needed to be moved because of the children; would we kindly switch seats to the exit row?  Sure, no problem.  We ended up with less legroom in seats that didn't recline, but we were ten rows closer to getting off the plane when we landed...small consolation, but we were sure relieved not to have missed our flight....the end my friend.