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, whose 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.

Today is dragging along at a slow pace. Typically Fridays fly by, but today I’m a little tired and just not feeling the whole work thing. This is probably due to me staying out a little too late on a school night. The occasion was a SoundRabbit show at this funky little place called the Mercury Cafe. I arrived a little early and walked up the steps to ask the door guy where the concert was going to be. Once upstairs I knew it wasn’t going to be there, since there was some sort of swing dancing going on. We finally concluded that the show was downstairs in a little room connected to the restaurant.

I chatted with the band while they were setting up, mostly about the tour that they just did that took them all the way out to the east coast and then back to Colorado. It sounds like they had a good time and are ready to take a similar trip next month. The show was good as always, though the manager tried stopping them after only a couple of songs saying that they were too loud. The problem was that they started off with some of the quieter tunes in the repertoire. Anyway, the show went on and the lady didn’t say anything else, she would just occasionally pop her head in and stare at everyone. It definitely toned down the night, but it was nice to see the band play again. I actually took my recording gear along and should have a tape online sometime soon.

Originally I thought that snow in April was crazy, but now that it’s May I might have to change my opinion. Yep, that’s right, it’s snowing again! This time it’s more than just a few flurries, we actually have a solid amount of accumulation on the ground. I heard on the radio this morning that up in the mountains they got fourteen inches overnight, so let’s just hope we don’t get all of that. Typically we don’t get it all but you never know. All of this comes after a nice day yesterday with temperatures in the 70’s and the sun shining. I guess we really don’t have a real spring season, for us spring is just a mix of summer and winter, which can change back and forth fairly often.

Kim and I have officially finished our marriage prep classes as required by the Catholic Church. Fortunately, we were able to take all of the classes on our time using online forms and email. Most of the work was done with Catholic Marriage Prep Online over the past couple of months. Basically, we worked on our own to answer questions in various lesson web forms, and after submitting our answers we would get an answer key and response from our instructors. This process worked pretty well, especially since it would be nearly impossible for us to commit to a single day for a series of weeks as often required by the live classes. Though this particular program is only good for the Denver and Colorado Springs Archdioceses, there may be other similar programs throughout the country or possibly the world.