I don’t know that you’d really be interested in ALL the details of our trip, so I’ll just give you the highlights.

When we first arrived we found an Olive Garden and had a late lunch. You may be surprised to know that none of us (Callie, her friends Zach and Tesla, nor I) had ever eaten at an Olive Garden. Well, we LOVED it! What a fabulous meal!

We left there and found our hotel — in the driving rain, no less. It rained for 2 days straight! In fact, we’ve had more rain in the last 10 days than in May, June and July combined! ANYway, we got to the hotel and decided to just stay there since it was late afternoon and the weather was so crappy. The kids all went swimming for like 2 1/2 hours. Oh, I almost forgot, after we first got there we went exploring and found the fitness room and all took a machine and had fun doing that for a while. On the way back to our rooms I stopped at the bar when we passed it and ordered an adult beverage. It was yummy. The kids were jealous. THEN they went swimming.

I stayed in my room and enjoyed my cocktail, relaxed on the bed and then called Hubs to see how things were at home. Oh, and I watched the Olympics, too. When the kids came back upstairs we ordered room service. We were a little bit disappointed in the food, but it wasn’t bad enough that we went hungry.

I was a tired puppy, so I fell asleep around 1:00AM. I slept off-and-on until about 9:00, then laid there until almost 10:00. I finally dragged my butt out of bed and went to wake up the kids. Tesla was already up and showered and ready to go, bored out of her mind. LOL The rest of us got our act together and we got out of there around 11:30.

We had lunch at an Applebee’s and did not like it AT ALL. I’ll never eat there again! Anyway, we finished up there pretty quickly since none of us liked our meals, then went shopping. We lucked out and found a great store in The Foothills Mall that was having a HUGE sale, so Callie got a bunch of new clothes for her birthday!

The BEST part, however, is that we went into The Body Shop, where I bought some fragrance oils and a burner, and while there found my son David a perfect girl!!!!! Long story short, her name is Tessa and she’s single and she wants to meet Dave! LOL Seriously! I wasn’t about to let that opportunity go by! Callie’s the one who brought it to my attention that she would be SO good with Dave, so I marched back in there and flat-out asked her if she had a boyfriend, and when she said no, I told her my son was perfect for her. She was absolutely serious about meeting him, too. It took me FOREVER to make David believe she really wanted to meet him, but I think I finally drilled it into his head. I hope he goes up there soon! Oh, and the funny part? When I told her what my son’s name was, she said “That’s kind of a curse in my family — well, not really a curse — it’s just that everyone in my family is married to a David”. LOL! I laughed and told her that that was proof he was perfect for her, and that she could soon be my daughter-in-law. She laughed, too, and said, “Yeah, and then you can get a discount here!”. So who knows, maybe it was providence that we went into that particular store at that particular time.

OK, now for the pictures! Oh, and if you’re wondering why my daughter is kissing a tree, she’s not. LOL She’s smelling it. Why is she smelling it? Well, if you’ve ever smelled a Colorado Rocky Mountain pine tree after a real good rainfall, then you don’t need me to explain it to you; if you haven’t, then I can’t even begin to explain it to you.

That dog in a couple of the pics is a Cheyenne look-alike that we saw playing in the Poudre River when we made our first stop. His owner was throwing rocks and sticks and he was trying to find them. He was SO cute! And the rest of the pictures? Well, they’re pretty self-explanatory. As I stated before in an earlier post, we drove up into the Poudre Canyon in the Rockies. Heaven on earth! Oh yeah, that last picture? As the afternoon waned and the weather was still unsettled, the clouds began descending onto the mountaintop. It was glorious!

Enjoy! (if you click on images, you’ll see the full-sized versions)

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