Next Stop: Denver & Colorado Springs, CO

The next stop on our road trip was Denver, CO. We stayed with old family friends (like they knew my family before I was born - or pretty soon after I was born). George and Cindy were very generous to let us stay with them, and their son, Paul, was nice to let the kids have his room while we were there.

What was so amazing about this stay was that the girls were timid of dogs and Li'l Steve was just terrified of them. Little Candy here cured them of their fears. She was kind of jumpy (really loved to jump and bark and play with and lick you) so they shied from her at first, but by the time we left the three of them were so enamored with Candy that they wanted to take her with us and were very sad that we had to leave her behind.

The picture in the bottom left corner was Steve's doing. Somehow or another we got our hands on a balloon and Steve decided that he wanted to see static electricity in action . . . poor dog.


My sister, Pua, was supposed to meet us up in Denver, but because of work, she didn't make it. She also had to go back into work, even though she had requested leave for the day, so we had some time to kill before driving down to Colorado Springs to visit with her. We decided that we would go to the Denver Zoo. Very expensive, but worth it for us and the kids.

So we finished at the zoo and made our way to meet Pua. And yes, she came out to meet us bare foot and in surfer shorts. The place we met her at was her friend's (the girl in green) place. We hung out there for a while, playing and chasing the kids down the stairs. Then we went to IHOP for dinner and headed back up to Denver to get some sleep for the next leg of driving.

This is my favorite part of this trip. When Pua came out to greet us, she was barefoot (as mentioned earlier). And because she was barefoot, Neena looked at her toes and asked her why she only had three toenails painted. Yes, PAINTED! My sister had her toenails PAINTED. And not just clear coat, they were deep metalic blue. When I asked her in total complete shock how it was possible that HER toes were painted she told me that her friends convinced her to get a PEDICURE, a professional-at the-salon PEDICURE! It had been a long time before we got there, hence only three toes left, but the evidence was SHOCKING!

She caught me trying to take pictures so that I could prove it to everyone else so she kept trying to hide her feet from me, but I'm too fast for her. Hehehe. Then I made the ultimate mistake of letting her have my camera. As soon as I handed it over to her, I knew my mistake and screamed at the top of my lungs, "NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I knew that she was going to figure out how to erase my picture of her toes. I jumped up and tackled her and we proceeded to wrestle for my camera (the black picture and the shelf were taken during the wrestling match). The kids, I am told, watched in complete facination that their Mommy was fighting their Aunty, and at one point they even tried to help me (I vaguely recall cries of, "Don't hurt my Mommy" coming from one or more of my children). Steve just sat back and enjoyed the show, he didn't think I had it in me and deftly pulled the children out of the way before they got hurt, since neither she or I were paying any attention. Obviously I won the wrestling match (though she might have let me win) because I still have the original picture (bottom right corner) and then I took the other two pictures just to spite her. Oh, the joys of sisterhood :)