Parental Visit

Last week Kristen and I ran the Rollinsville 5 mile race, along with our friend Mary.  It was fun being in the mountains in a tiny community.  The race had a healthy turnout, which is always good to see.

The parents were in town starting on Thursday.  We had a lot of fun during the visit, cramming a lot of stuff into two-and-a-half days.

Thursday evening we walked down to the mall, leaving Lena to watch over the cats.  Luckily they seemed to tolerate one another to some degree, so there weren't big moments of drama between the two camps.  Ma & Pa were pretty pooped from the drive, so we kept things pretty low-key.  We walked around the mall a little, then ended up at Juanita's for dinner.  There were a lot of musicians and buskers out and about, so there was plenty to look at.

Friday morning involved swinging by my office so the folks could check that out.  We walked there and back, so we all got a bit of exercise.  Later, Dad napped while Ma and I rounded up supplies for the BBQ.  We did as much prep work as possible food-wise, and Dad and I put together some of our new patio furniture.

The party went well, and it didn't rain on us, I didn't kill anyone with my grilling skills, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures, although I believe Ma did.  We did a bit of clean-up afterward then Ma located the camera, and we finished up the evening by viewing their photos from the farm stay.

Saturday morning had another early start.  The four of us biked down to the farmers market to check things out.  No one got hit on the road, and I think I heard Mom having fun jumping curbs behind us.

We then headed up to Nederland, taking a scenic back route.  Nederland was having an "Art Festival", which apparently meant a bunch of vendors selling reproduced art in booths.  We had some yummy Indian food for lunch, and hiked around a bit.

We swung by Allenspark and met up with Rick Debiase.  We checked his place out for a bit, I enjoyed climbing around his tree fort/structure, and am now considering putting a fire escape pole on the Indiana tree house.

Rick mentioned that Stith Bennett was having a "Poetry Jam", so the five us headed that way at the appropriate time.  Rick warned us with something along the lines of "These things are usually pretty weird, but fun."  That seemed to sum things up pretty well.  4 or 5 musicians would improvise music as poets recited some of their work.  People were dancing around, randomly grabbing instruments, and generally enjoying themselves.  Kristen and I both passed on the "brownies", suspecting they weren't of the normal variety.  Stith's studio had a lot of exposed beams that were sawn in the sawmill back in '79 or '80, it was a lot of fun looking at the structure of the building.

We got home fairly late, and all crashed.  The folks were gone by the time I got up, heading back to Cody.  Kristen and I both really enjoyed having them in town.