Colorado and Birthday Parties

Hi Everyone,

First of all, I must apologize for not posting last Sunday, and then I’m going to bore you with the details of my vacation in Colorado. Smile. Of course, it wasn’t boring to me. I loved every moment of my trip.

For those of you who don’t know what traveling standby is like, I’m starting with the day I began my trip. Up at 2:30 a.m. and at the airport by 4:30 a.m. where fortunately checking baggage was made easy with curb check-in. Since, I had already printed my priority listing ticket at home I was able to go through security and to the gate. All went smoothly at our Kansas City airport. I made it on the flight and in the air by 6:00 a.m. without a worry in the world. I even dozed until we arrived at Dallas Airport.

Once at Dallas, I had a couple of hours to kill before my flight to Colorado Springs, which was fortunate since I had to make my way to another terminal for that flight. Anyone who has been to the DFW airport knows that transition is made easy by a train that people can get on and are transported from place to place. It takes all of 15 minutes at most.

At that terminal is where my troubles began. Grin. Being a seasoned stand-by traveler, I was expecting it somewhere along the line. To shorten this part of the story, I missed three flights out of Dallas before I caught the fourth one. I was lucky that all four flights were in the same terminal, although at different gates. As I waited, I had breakfast and started a book by Dean Koontz titled False Memory. It was the first story of his I had read since Red October (bored me to death with all the technology), but False Memory held my attention and had me rooting for all the characters to the end.

On the flight to Dallas, I sat next to a man and we managed to visit a bit between reading my book and him working his cross-word puzzle. The reason I bring him up is because I think he might have been a classmate from Lawrence High School since he asked me my name, but being so absorbed in my book and the topic we were discussing I didn’t think to ask his. (Addendum: I looked up the pictures in my 1962 class looking for this man, but all of us have changed so much I couldn’t tell for sure if he was any of my classmates.)

We were discussing Egypt because he had been there recently to visit his son and his wife. His son works for an architectural firm that is building a new Cairo Museum. I was particularly interested to learn if the country’s attitude toward women had changed since I last visited there. It appears that in some instances it had, but I would still never recommend a lone woman to travel there by themselves. I’m going to write more on this topic at a later date.

On to Colorado where my sister picked me up at the airport and took me to her home to rest where I was greeted with a big hug from my brother-in-law. Yay, Jon. Everything else was pretty much a jumble the rest of the time I was there, so I’ll tell you the main reason I made this trip, to attend birthday parties. Lol My great-nephew turned ten and a great-niece turned five. The week or so before another one turned three, but I wasn’t able to make it for that one as I had a lot of work to do before leaving, and I couldn’t spend that much time away from home.

While there, I played Sorry with my soon-to-be five-year-old great-niece, Ashley, and let me tell you she knew the rules by heart even better than her mother. Grin. I met Daisy, a six- month-old puppy who was so sweet I fell in love with her and got reacquainted with Toby whom I’ve always loved since I met him. We went to the park to walk the dogs and let the kids ride their scooters.

Later, Alex put on a magic show with his assistants, Taylor, Ashley and Courtney. He even dragged some of the adults out of their seats to help. It was great fun, and I laughed and clapped with each trick.

The next day Jon’s brother, Fred, drove into town for a visit. After that, we played games at night when we had a chance to stay at home. Also, I went to a Bunko party with my sister, which was a lot of fun.

Alex’s tenth birthday party was a lot of fun with family and friends there. My last day with Alex and his sister, Courtney, he showed me all his books on Egypt (he’s very interested in the ancient history of Egypt), and then they took me through his museums. One was a museum of money from different countries and the other was an art museum made up of drawings each of the kids drew. Lol Don’t ever think these museums were free. These kids are entrepreneurs, and I paid them 75 cents to go through the money museum and 25 cents for the art museum, although they were only charging 10 cents for that one. Grin.

Ashley, the lucky girl had two birthday parties, one with family and another with friends. The first day was her actual birthday, the whole family played miniature golf, and all of these kids are pros, especially Taylor who has gone golfing with her dad and Papa. Then, in the evening when the whole family could get together we had her family birthday party.
The next day was the kid party, and although I didn’t attend, I hear it was pretty special. A huge tunnel and trampoline type thing (sorry, but my mind is gone, and I can’t think of the name of this contraption) was set up in the back yard for this party. lol

Miss Taylor didn’t get as much of my attention this time, but I let her know I love her very much as I love Alex, Ashley and Courtney and their mothers and fathers. It was for these little ones as well as my sister and brother-in-law and my nieces that I made this trip.

The only thing I did, other than family activities, was go to the majestic Garden of the Gods, and I did do a bit of shopping. I promised my sister that next time I came out we would do more sight-seeing, although, I’ve seen a lot already at other visits dating back to the sixties when Jon was stationed there after his National Guard unit was activated.

I loved the peace of looking at the Rockies while sitting out on the patio, or walking around the park area at the back of my sister’s house. I had a wonderful time, Sis and Jon. Thanks for having me.

Did I make it back home? Of course, I did, or I wouldn’t be posting this blog. Although, I had to get up for an early flight again, I didn’t miss any going home.

Talk about being long-winded, if this were a story I would have cut out half of it to make it more exciting, but this is about real life. Smile. It wasn't boring to me. Smile.

See you next Sunday. Have a great week everyone.

Sandy