15 Years

I know it's hard to believe, but Nathan and I have been married for 15 years. Ah, the bliss of it all. We've talked for a long time (like 5 years) of the glamorous place we'd go when we hit 15, but then 15 came quicker than we thought it would. Since we have a few other trips on the horizon this year we opted to go to Denver, Colorado and honestly, since it was just the two of us, I'd have been fine with going to Logan. But we decided on Denver because we've never been there, it was close enough to drive and Nathan has always wanted to go to a US Mint.
We left the morning of the 6th and drove out through Evanston and then over the whole bottom of Wyoming. You know, some stated are just prettier than others and I wonder sometimes if the ugly ones get jealous.


Upon discovering that we were in Cheyenne, the state capitol, we decided to go off the beaten path a bit and go to see the capitol building. They have all kinds of statues around their capitol building and we saw some little rabbits who probably wish they didn't have to live in Wyoming. It was a good diversion.

Hooray! We finally arrived in Colorado. It looked like Wyoming for a few miles and then it started to look like Utah. Then it kept looking like Utah except the mountains were further away.
We stayed at a Courtyard in Greenwood Village. Not to toot my bargain shopping horn, but we got this place for $42 a night. Suck on that, Motel 6.

The Denver Art Museum

We're not artsy people, but we'd never been to an art museum before. We figured we might as well do something that we'd never take Natalee to do since she wasn't with us, so we thought we'd give it a try. When we got there we found out that it happened to be free since it was the first Saturday of the month. Free is always good. Secondly, we were pretty surprised at how much we liked it. We got to see the work of several famous painter such as Renior, Monet, Picasso, Pissarro, Cassat, and Warhol. There were also lots of Native American arts and crafts on display. Some of the things we didn't love (like a stand of vibrating plants) but for the most part it was very nice.

Cinco de Mayo Festival

After the museum we went over to the Cinco de Mayo festival. We had been told by a local person that we might be killed if we went to this festival, but we were feeling rebellious and decided to face the danger for the sake of getting some good Mexican food. We saw lots of colorful costumes, some soccer players, dancers and a parade. We got some awesome tacos and took part in a chilie verde competition. It was a lot of fun and we didn't even almost get killed once.

We left the Cinco de Mayo festival in a rush so that we could make it to the temple. They were doing the last session at 4:00, so we knew we were cutting it close. We changed quick and drove fast and made it just under the wire. They even let us do sealings all by ourselves, which was nice. The little temple workers told us some fun stuff about the temple and the history of the church in the area when we needed to take breaks.

On Sunday we got up and went to church. It was Mother's Day and some kids sang in the Ward and I got a little sad that mine would be singing in my Mom's Ward and her mother wasn't there to hear it. It's the breaks of having your Anniversary always fall on or around Mother's Day. Anyway, they gave me a rose like all the other ladies even though I didn't really belong, however in the church we all sort of belong, don't we?
After church Nathan took a nap. What? A NAP? ON A SUNDEE?
Yeah, it was beyond awesome.
I read my new Mother's Day book and enjoyed some sunshine, so we both had a great couple of hours.
Then in the early evening we went to The Denver Botanic Gardens. They were quite pretty considering the season. The lilacs smelled so wonderful, and that made me think of my mother who loves lilacs so much.

The gardens had inside and outside exhibits and here we are sweating to death in one of the inside ones. I tell you what, it was about 200 degrees and 100% humidity. So the good news is that it was kind of like we got to go to Costa Rica for our Anniversary, even though we were really in Denver.
Here are some of the other pretties. My favorite was the Japanese garden. And there was this squirrel who wouldn't leave us alone. There were lots of families there with picnics. We didn't get the memo and really had no way to bring a picnic, but I don't think she was willing to accept the fact that we didn't have any food for her. I felt bad, but I'm pretty confident that she won't starve to death.

Monday morning dawned early. We had to get to THE MINT, which was the whole reason we chose to visit Denver in the first place. It was very informative and interesting. We got to see the production of Dollar coins and Pennies and I was surprised at how close we were to it. The guide we had was great and I think we both learned a lot. They won't let you take cameras into the place. Something about security blah, blah, blah, so this was a very quick shot that I snapped on our way out of town from the car.


After the Mint we went to the State Capitol. It was pretty much like the other ones we've been to, except that you get to join a certain club just by walking up the steps.

We left Denver and drove up through Boulder to a loop that takes you to Rocky Mountain National Park. Because of the snow we couldn't go in the park, but we sure saw some pretty scenery. We also saw dozens of elk, antelope and three mountain goats who I probably could have petted if I'd wanted to. (I didn't really want to.)

We spent the night in the Ft. Collins Marriott. We got up early on the morning of the 10th (our actual Anniversary) and high-tailed it back home. My mom dropped Natalee at school and we had to get there by the time she got out of school. I'm happy to say that we made it with an hour to spare.

We came home to this sweet cake that she'd baked for us. She told us that it wasn't a very good cake (it was carrot cake and it was actually very good) but she had tried to decorate it really pretty so that we wouldn't be upset that it wasn't a chocolate cake. She's hysterical sometimes.

Speaking of hysterical, she took this picture of us outside of Outback where we went for dinner that night. She was telling us to "smile....hold still....wait for it....I'm going to count....one, two, three....smile....are you smiling....ok, here I go" and then we finally got our picture taken. It was pretty funny.I must say that I am very happy with my choice 15 years later and I think Nathan feels the same way most of the time. He's a sweetheart and I love him to pieces.