mhalebusiness: Adventure (back) to God's Country

I'm pretty certain that if God got to choose where He's from, it'd be somewhere in Colorado.

The four of us had a chance to go out to Colorado recently - thanks to credit card airline miles! Our primary objective was to spend some time with our friends out there - especially the Peppers. It was a great trip.

We left Merritt Island on Tuesday - with Papa recovering from a bad sinus cold. The flight there was quite easy - primarily due to the fact that Cecilia woke that morning with a mild fever that rose to 102.5 for most of the flight. So she was pretty lethargic and cuddly the whole flight. Carly and I were lucky - we got to sit in the front row, so extra leg room! Cecilia's fever receded almost as soon as we landed and Cecilia started acting her normal boisterous self again - no other symptoms. Huh, weird...

The first evening, we spent with Jen and Sarah, two of Carly's FOCUS friends. We had a great time visiting, and the next day had a chance to go to Mass at the FOCUS National Headquarters and visit with all the other FOCites that work there. Lots and lots of Carly's good friends, and even a few folks that I knew! Cecilia had a good time too, randomly running into people's offices and the like.

That afternoon, we headed down to the Springs to the Pepper's house, where we planned to stay for the majority of our vaca. The Pepper's (Amadee and Carol, Tonia, Anna, and Mia) were my sponsor family while I was at the Academy, and are now our families are very good friends. So we got down and got to spending time with them - staying up too late, playing too hard, and - well, I almost said drinking too much, and although we definitely enjoyed a multitude of friendly beverages, but we didn't drink too much, if you catch my drift. We had a great time with the family - the girls had school during the day, but Amadee was home from work, so we spent the days with Amadee and Carol, and the afternoon and nights with the whole fam. The initial plan was to head to the Pepper's condo in Breckenridge for a little skiing action over the weekend, but several of us were feeling under the weather. So we decided instead to stay home and play Sing It, a PSP karaoke game. Way fun. To the extent that several of us lost our voices.

We also had a chance to spend a few hours here and there with some good friends in the Springs as well - Dave and Catherine DiNuzzo and their two little girls Lily and Emma, as well as Andy and Brooks Anderson and their newborn son, Asher. We also really wanted to see Jeremy and Dianna Cassidy and their son Simeon too, but it didn't work out (long story).

We decided to head back up to Denver for our last night in Colorado - and had a great time staying with Chris and Elizabeth Kuetemeyer and their two kiddos, Jonathon and Catherine.

All four of these families - the DiNuzzos, Andersons, Cassidys, and Kuetemeyers - have blogs linked from our page, feel free to check them out! And thanks to everyone for letting us stay at your place / make time to spend with us!

The next morning, our little foursome headed out to the airport and a (somewhat more crazy wild) flight back to FL and our little home on the swamp.

We got a few good pics though - and some fun videos of Cecilia talking to us using her sign language. Check them out!