Let me preface this by saying this post may be quite long – I have a lot to say!

We arrived in Colorado Saturday after a VERY long day of waiting, flying and driving. Let me just tell you about the Denver airport… it’s freaking HUGE! I had no idea. We figured like most airports we’d get off, walk to the rental car place and voila – we’d be in the car. Not so much. We walked off, walked about a half mile to the sign that said baggage claim. What it really meant was – get on this train that will take you 3 stops to the baggage claim. So we did – and then we walked some more. Finally at the baggage claim where we met up with Caitlin, who looked beautiful to say the least. A side note – she is just so growing into herself, and is really unbelievably beautiful in person. Anyhow, we get our bags, have to walk another 1/2 mile at least to where the buses pick you up to bring you to the rental car. Finally get to the rental car place, get the car and we’re on our way on the 1 1/2 hour ride to Colorado Springs. 11 hours after we got to the airport in RDU we get to the hotel where my mom is staying. So, it was a long day.

We meet up with my sister and her new husband to be, Justin. He seemed pleasant enough. We were all so tired we just went to eat at Applebees because it was right there, and we walked over. Which by the way, is not so easy to do when the altitude change kicks your ass. We finally eat and head back to my sister’s house. I’m shortening this story to leave out the part about Justin kind of being a jackass to me, but more on that later.

We get back to my sister’s house and everyone goes to bed. Let me just say that my sister has never been a clean freak but OMG her house was filthy. Like old filthy – she gave me this smelly pillow to sleep on that she said she washed but it was still nasty. The blanket had stains on it, and I swear to god I wanted to get in a cab and crash my mother’s hotel room. But that’s okay, I just put on a heavy sweatshirt with hood, put the hood up and went to sleep without the blanket, lol. What I would do to keep the family peace!!!

2 days right? I could do it!

We wake up the morning of the wedding – I was up at 5:30am because of the time difference (7:30am here), and we just waited around getting dressed and all that stuff. I have to say, my sister looked very nice and Justin looked nice as well.

Okay, about Justin now – he was extremely argumentative with me that night before. It wasn’t as if he were trying to be, that is just his nature. So, everything I would say he would argue with me. I was so exhausted I sort of told him that, and by the next morning he had stopped arguing and seemed quite nice. So, we started to finally get along which was good! She looked beautiful in her wedding dress, and Caitlin looked great.

Now, to the fun stuff. The fake flowers. I am not kidding – my sister was so excited because instead of a bouquet, she bought a $5.00 fake flower bouquet made of plastic flowers. LOL. Who the hell does that? I had sort of said, um… why? Without being condescending of course! I didn’t make a big deal of it, but I really wanted to. Can anyone say tacky??? So, my mother showed up to drive us to the wedding, saw the “flowers” and just about had a heart attack! She said “oh no – we’ll stop somehwere and get you a bouquet” My sister tried to argue, but that wasn’t happening, my mother was NOT going to let her get married with plastic flowers. I wish you all were there to see the look on my mother’s face – it was priceless.

So, we left for the wedding and dropped my sister and Caitlin off before heading to try to find a Walmart 15 minutes before the wedding, whereas I ran in, grabbed a dozen roses and ran back out in less than 5 minutes. It was a new record for sure! In the car, I pulled them apart, wrapped them in white satin that she had left over from her dress and voila! A proper bouquet… and my mother was happy :-) And I just wanted to say to Kristen – see, for an extra $5.00 I got you a REAL bouquet of roses that look a heck of a lot better than plastic ones!

This is where I will leave off for now, so you don’t get too bored ;) I’ll be back tomorrow to continue the wedding story – including snippets of my conversation with my father. Should be fun!