And the weddings just keep on rolling. Kim and I were back in Cincinnati yet again this past weekend for the wedding of my cousin Gina. Her and Geoff have been dating for a number of years and they are for sure a good fit. The ceremony was down in an beautiful old church near the Ohio River called St. Rose. The ceremony was the first full Catholic ceremony I’ve been to that was less than an hour in length. Apparently the priest there is known for his speedy masses. Gotta love the dedication of us Catholics!

Their reception was held at The Grand in Covington, KY. This was my first time in this room and I was really impressed. Despite being next-door to a gentleman’s club, the inside is beautifully restored and renovated. I believe it’s a newer hall, but had it been open during the time of our wedding, I would have highly considered it. Needless to say, the party was great, the food was wonderful, and the drinks were flowing. It’s always great to see family and I look forward to another celebration in another month from now.

As always, my mom has tons of pictures on her flickr. A slide show is below:

We had another great weekend at my parents’ house for their annual pig roast, better known as Pig-Fest. This was the sixteenth year in a row for the party. It was a hot day, but fortunately we saw no rain. In typical fashion, my wiffleball team lost in the first round, but I was able to win the cornhole tournament! The nice thing is that the winners of the cornhole tournament take home the jackpot after each player throws $2 in the pot.

My friend MER came down from Chicago once again to entertain the crowd after the sun went down. He also brought another musician with him, Noah Gabriel, who I’m looking forward to seeing again in the future. Other events of the day included a pinata, volleyball, and of course some flip cup toward the end of the evening. My body is very sore from too much fun, but i can’t wait until we can do it all over again next summer.

Pictures are starting to show up on facebook, and I’m sure my mom will have tons on her flickr page soon. I’ll be sure to keep the Pig-Fest website updated with any photos I find.

You may recall a large flip cup tournament that we’ve participated in the past couple years. Well that event took place once again this past Saturday and we were there for the third year in a row. This time it was moved from our friends’ backyard and morphed into a block party outside of the Pub on Pearl. The organizers even launched a website to provide the growing crowd with all of the needed info.

This year we decided to go with a sailor theme, and named ourselves Down the Hatch. We were able to get some affordable gear from the surplus store a few miles down the road from our house to complete our costumes. The event started off great, though we lost our first match in the opening round to a team that wasn’t even dressed up. Before we could play our second match of the evening, the skies opened up to a nasty storm. The bar was quickly filled to capacity with people spilling out of both ends. It did clear enough for us to fit in another game in the losers bracket, and we won this time. But again the weather would not cooperate and the second storm forced the cancellation of the tournament when the 10pm curfew approached quickly.

Despite all of these troubles, and the fact that the bar couldn’t keep up with the large crowd, we managed to have a great time. Dozens of our friends were in attendance and it was great to see everyone in their most creative costumes. I took a few photos on my iPhone, which can be seen below. It was definitely another wild time!

Here are my photos from Ken and Becky’s wedding weekend which I wrote about yesterday. Actually I take that back, these are mostly Kim’s photos from the weekend. I think she did a pretty good job of capturing a little bit of everything. Such a fun wedding weekend. Best of luck to the newlyweds.

Over the weekend I helped celebrate the wedding of my good friend from high school, Ken Burns. Throughout high school Kenny always told us that he would one day get married in a kilt. Not only did he accomplish this, he also managed to get myself and a couple of other guys from high school in kilts as well. There was a bit of a kilt catastrophe as my order never showed up, but thankfully my mom helped to piece one together and the wedding went on without any other issues. Here’s a photo of me, Bryan Lutz, and Jon Riehle in our kilts.

The ceremony and reception both took place on the Ohio River at the Inn at Oneonta. It was a little hot during the day with our thick garments on, but it really cooled off at night and the party was a blast! There was a bagpiper, great acoustic tunes, and a big band to wind out the night. After that we were all having so much fun, we hooked up some DJ equipment and let the partying continue. Many of us decided to stay the night and camp in tents and cars. Here another photo of me in a kilt with Kim.

My mom has a ton of pictures up on her flickr page. I know I don’t have nearly as many on my camera, but I’ll work on getting those posted in the near future.

Earlier this week when writing about the Race for Dreams, I mentioned a party that Kim and I attended on Saturday night. The “Spring Fling” party was a benefit for the Boys & Girls Club of Metro Denver put on by the Denver Phoenix Club. For $30 we were treated to a great time with music, food, drinks, and prizes. We attended the same party last year, and knowing how much fun it was, invited some friends of ours to come along. Here’s a photo of us with our friends Erin and Nick:

Our theme for this year’s Pig-Fest has been decided, and invitations have been sent out. Leave a comment if you didn’t get yours and I’ll be sure that you are added to the list. Also, new this year, you can become a fan of Pig-Fest on facebook and view this year’s event there as well. Hope you all can attend.

Speaking of Pig Flu, there’s been lots of talk about Pig-Fest recently. Have no fear, the party will not be affected in any way. We have had a date picked for a long time (August 8th), but I’ve been putting off talking about it until I found the time to create a good theme/logo for it. However, I’ve been so busy that I still haven’t found the time. So maybe someone out there will help us in deciding on a theme and/or designing a logo. A couple of ideas that we’ve had:

• First was some sort of theme involving the 16th anniversary of the party, something along the lines of sweet sixteen perhaps. Someone came up with this slogan: 1600 beers. 160 pounds of pig. 16 bags of charcoal. 1 Sweet Pig-Fest 16.
• And our second and final idea is to incorporate something to do with the recent swine flu outbreak and general reactions from people. Maybe we could have a pig with one of those masks covering it’s nose and mouth. Or perhaps we could come up with something to assure everyone that our pig is not infected with the flu. I’m still brainstorming on this, but those are my thoughts so far.

Good news is that we are having the party again, and once again our friend MER will be back to provide evening entertainment. We just need some help in the creativity department this year. Invites will go out soon and I promise the website will be updated.

The weather was perfect on Saturday for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Denver. I’ve read that they estimated the crowd to be 200,000 or more. We arrived down on the corner of 17th & Blake around 11:30 and it’s safe to say that the parade had already been going on for an hour and half but it continued for another two hours or so. It was long enough for me to get a little sunburn on my forehead and nose.

There were over 200 different participants in the parade, and I’m told that nearly anyone can register a group. This definitely adds to the hilarity of the parade, as you’ll see everything from the regular firetrucks and bands to the rarer horses and large party buses. Heck, even the Hare Krishnas were in this years parade. Just like last year, we all joked about getting a group together for the following year’s parade, but perhaps we’ll actually act on it in 2010.

My personal celebration of St. Patty’s Day will continue through tomorrow, as I’m taking a half day off of work and joining a group of others for lunch and drinks!

Sunday morning we went down to Civic Center Park in downtown Denver for the Obama rally. The “doors” opened at 10am, and we arrived before 11 to find thousands of people already there. There were many different speakers before Obama arrived to address the crowd estimated at well over 100,000 people. Multiple streets were closed due to the overwhelming crowd, including some of the busiest in town, and it’s been said this was the largest rally that has been held. It was crazy to see that many people gathered in one place, and I was glad that I attended even though I could barely see a thing, though hearing the speech was not a problem.

Yesterday I dropped off my mail in ballot (along with Kim’s) at a designated early voting location. Though I’m sure it doesn’t need to be said, don’t forget to vote! Even though my vote is already in, I may head out during lunch next Tuesday to a local polling location just to take in the vibe for awhile. I’ll be sure to wear the “I Voted” sticker that they gave to me yesterday proudly.