It just occurred to me that I’ve yet to talk about our planned honeymoon after the wedding. Well, this will likely be the first of many posts about it as I work on planning each stop of the twelve night Mediterranean cruise on Royal Caribbean. We start and end in Barcelona including one night there before the cruise, but I’ve yet to plan anything for that stop.

So our first stop once we actually get on the ship is Cannes, which is famous for the international film festival. However, there doesn’t appear to be much else to offer us, besides the beaches we’ll find in surrounding cities, so my initial plans have us taking a train ride out to Monte Carlo. Obviously there’s a famous casino in this tiny country, but there is much more to see including the Prince’s Palace and Cathedral. I doubt we’ll make it inside the Grand Casino since a jacket and tie are required, but I’ve heard that the outside is worth seeing anyway.

From there, I’m planning to stop in Nice on our way back toward Cannes. This city is the center of the French Riviera, and I’m sure we’ll take a stroll down the Promenade des Anglais which runs right along the beaches. There also appears to be many other historical sites to see along the way. And once we spend some time in Nice, we’ll take the train back to Cannes to finish the day by exploring the city before getting back on the boat.

Are there any other must sees in or around the cities mentioned? Also, I’m up for considering other nearby cities/towns if there is something high on the list. I’m sure we’ll take a couple of the excursions offered by the cruise line later in the trip, but I’m thinking that we should explore any cities that we can easily sightsee on our own.

Another season of men’s league hockey started last night. Due to the Monkees lack of interest in the summer league, I’ve joined another team at a rink I’ve never played at before. A couple of guys from the old team put this team together and asked me to play on it. It was nice being back out on the ice after taking weeks off. This league is one division lower than what I played in last, so it’s a bit slower, but there is still enough talent to make it interesting.

We had sixteen guys show up for our first game, so it was hard to get into the flow of the game. We ended up with four forward lines, which is the equivalent of what we had on our varsity high school team. A little bit much for men’s league hockey. I guess it was too much for the whole team, as we ended up losing 4-1 after never really finding the groove. Hopefully less people show up for the next game and we have better results.

Over the weekend I also took my first trip to Garden of the Gods and Pike’s Peak. We met up with our family friends, the Hemmelgarns, who’s daughter Amy just recently moved to Colorado Springs with her husband Corey. After checking out some of the various rock formations in the Garden of the Gods, we took a drive over to the base of Pike’s Peak. We paid a discounted rate to get through the gates, since the trail to the top was only open 13 of the 19 miles. Though we didn’t get very high, very close to the tree line, there were still some great views along the way. I’ve added some pictures to my site, and my mom has a ton more on her flickr page.

As I mentioned toward the end of last week, my parents were out visiting for the weekend. This was their first trip out since they helped us with our first house hunting trip out here in Denver. We kept very busy throughout the weekend, and among the events was a concert out at Red Rocks. Though I’m not typically a country music fan, I decided to buy tickets to the show for Mother’s Day. And besides, I always say that any show at Red Rocks is worth seeing.

The lineup for the night included Sugarland and Pat Green, neither of which I was familiar with other than knowing that they sang country. I must say that I was a little surprised by both acts. First, Pat Green was a pretty funny guy up on stage and you could really tell that he was loving every minute of playing at the legendary venue. His music was a bit on the rock edge of genre, and he was accompanied by a talented band.

Sugarland is a duo act consisting of the primary female singer, and a guy on guitar, mandolin, and also vocals. In addition to these two there was a full band on the stage with them. Again, the band was totally trilled about playing at Red Rocks, and it showed in their performance. They are definitely country, and it’s hard to understand a thing the front lady is saying at times, but they were entertaining. And to complete the night, they ended the show with a cover of a Matt Nathanson song, followed up by a pretty solid take on Pour Some Sugar on Me. I will admit that I had a much better time than I was anticipating.

Over time, we’ve been slowly replacing some of our hand-me-down furniture items with some new stuff of our own. Our most recent purchase is a new counter height dining room table, that was just delivered yesterday. It was nice having my parents around so they could help unwrap everything and get it all setup. This new table provides much more space than the garage sale table we bought years ago. Now we can finally seat more than two people for dinner. So far I’m really happy with the purchase. I’ll try to get some updated house pictures online soon, things are slowly being updated.

My parents are in town visiting. Woohoo! But I’m currently sick with a cold. Boohoo! Hopefully tomorrow will prove to be more exciting times on the net.

We’re debating putting new siding on our house. We have a dormer that is in terrible condition and is the primary driving force behind this project. But while we were thinking about it, the back of the house also needs some work to repair and repaint the wood shake siding that is on there currently. So instead of doing that work, why not have new siding put onto the back of the house? And then I figured if we are doing the back we might as well do the front in order to keep things consistent. So now we’re looking at getting all of the siding redone.

The one question that still remains for me is if it’s worth it. It’s fairly expensive project when looking at doing the whole house, even when using products like vinyl siding. Of course we don’t want to destroy the integrity of the older home, so we’re only considering siding that still has a wood shake look to it. Often, you can’t even tell this stuff is fake when it’s up on the house. But I’m still not 100% sold on the idea. Anyone have any opinions on vinyl siding, or any other products?

We thought that picking a date for last year’s Pig-Fest was hard, but it had nothing on the date selection process for this year. But at least we get to have two big parties this year, Pig-Fest XV and our wedding. The first of which will be held on July 5th of this year, yep that’s right the 4th of July weekend or as we are calling it the “Pork of July Weekend.” The invitations should go out soon, so let me know if you’d like one delivered to your inbox (if you are typically on the list, no need to let me know). Our musical guest for the past few years, MER, is not able to make it this year so we are seeking other nighttime entertainment. Let me know if you have any ideas.

I’m not sure why it took us so long to check out the Bull & Bush Brewery, but that’s where we headed for dinner and drinks on Friday. I was familiar with the brewery after trying a few of their brews at the Great American Beer Festival this past year. I’m not sure what those selections were, but now after visiting the brewery and restaurant I would highly recommend their “Man Beer” IPA, if you are a hop lover. I washed down my turkey sandwich with a couple of these beers on our visit. Kim had a chicken sandwich with a couple Hefeweizen’s that were equally as good. Overall we had a very good experience, minus a couple of loud fellas on the patio, but we will definitely be back soon.