So, where did I leave off…

oh right, the fake flowers… so I dropped my sister off, ran to Walmart, put together a bouquet, and walked in to the restaurant where the wedding was held. I guess they were just waiting on us, and everyone was already seated – all 14 of us. So, I ran in, grabbed my mom’s camera – because wouldn’t you know, I forgot to charge my batteries – and started taking pictures. Right before it started the first person I saw was my father. He walked up to me and leaned down to give me a kiss. Now my father has always been a lip on lip kisser which TOTALLY freaks me out. So, I casually turned my face so he got my cheek. Thankfully the wedding started and I avoided any conversation at that point.

The wedding itself was short but very nice. I actually became the photographer since she didn’t have one officially… so officially it became me. Mostly because I didn’t need to sit down and watch my mother with tears in her eyes, and quite frankly, I’m not one for weddings anyhow. I feel they are much too public a display of affection. It’s amazing I even had one… but I really can’t watch anyone else’s. I know, it seems like it makes me a bad person, but I just don’t like PDA’s. Anyhow, back to her. The wedding was nice, they did a rose ceremony and so forth and it lasted about 7 to 10 minutes.

The wedding was over and I guess I was the only one who clapped – the preview to the reception I believe. It was just AWKWARD! So, Kristen just said – okay, reception time! So, we all walked into the next room where it was all set up nice for the reception. The table was u-shaped and thankfully my sister had enough sense to sit me completely opposite of my father… so he was at the left bottom of the U and I was on the top right of the U.

Now, may I say again – AWKWARD! Everyone sat down and barely anyone had anything to say. This, I found out later, was because his family weren’t too thrilled with the whole wedding thing. 2 of them didn’t mind her getting married, but thought she didn’t need a “showy” wedding as they have only been dating for 10 weeks. The other 10 basically hated everything about it. So, we ordered, smoked a couple of cigarettes, ate, smoked some more, had cake, smoked a little more and finally it ended. That is the shortened version, since there wasn’t much else that happened. Occasionally I walked into the upscale bar area to check the Patriots/Dolphins score because it was a Sunday after all which meant I was missing football.

Oh yeah, about 10 minutes before we all left my dad came up to me to see how I was doing. We had a pleasant, albeit short, conversation about weather, my son, his work, and the wedding. Just enough to do my daughterly duty but not enough to piss me off. So, all was good there. He didn’t look well to be honest – the nurse in my mother certainly came out and by the end of the wedding she had diagnosed him with skin cancer based on the large melanoma on his face. I’m not losing any sleep over it.

So, after the wedding, we all went back to Kristen’s to change and my mother and I headed off to the casino which was about 1 hour away. It was a gorgeous drive, but we quickly realized that the road went up. Now, mind you if you remember the previous post, we were already up at about 6,500 feet to begin with just being in Colorado Springs. This time we were going to Cripple Creek, CO which was almost all the way up to the top of Pike’s Peak – I think one of Colorado’s largest mountain. So, up up up we went, through a winding road with absolutely no guard rails. NO GUARD RAILS! At any point we could have veered right off the road and ended up waaaaaaaaaaaaaay down at the bottom of every ditch we passed… fun right?

We finally get up there, walk into the casino and had to promptly sit down. It was incredibly hard to breathe and incredibly hard to walk. It was like walking through mud! I finally asked someone who worked there what the elevation was and they said about 11,000 feet. HOLY SHIT! The woman merely pointed out the free oxygen bar and told me to take advantage of it. So I did, lol.

We were there about 20 minutes when my mom said she had to leave. Typical altitude sickness hit her – she couldn’t breathe, she had a massive headache and she felt like she was going to throw up. So, we headed back down. And no time too soon – I tried walking downstairs and by the time I walked back up I thought I would have to go lay down, lol. I don’t know how people get used to that!

I went through another horrible night sleep – awake every hour on the hour because my anxiety about my germaphobia got the best of me. Finally I got up at 3am and just stayed up. Monday we went through the Garden of the Gods which is an amazing “park” of natural rock formations that is truly stunning. We took lots of pictures that I’m sure Jose would love to see – but they are on my mother’s camera which I forgot about when I promised pictures yesterday ;) Tomorrow when I go over for Thanksgiving I will get them so that I can put them on my blog for you all.

We had to drop Caitlin at the airport for 2pm but our flight didn’t leave till 6pm so it was another long day at the airport with us not getting to RDU until 11:30pm. Thankfully, now I’m home!

Whew, long story without much substance… but I kid you not, that 2 days passed wicked quick. I’m not going to get on a plane again for a VERY long time!

As for now, I want to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and hope you have a wonderful day! I’ll be back tomorrow night to post pictures :-)