Some places are always hard to leave and Boulder, Colorado has always been one such place for me. It's where my grandparents live, and every year I look forward to the smell of strong coffee at 6 am, waking up on an air mattress underneath my grandmother's Steinway grand piano, and of course the cooler weather. It's the little things really.
When you are arriving in Boulder coming from the Denver area you don't get a good view of the mountains until you drive over this big hill. At the crest of the hill you can see just about the entire front range of the Rockies, not to mention the perfect view of the Boulder Flat Irons. driving over that hill is one of my favorite things every trip. No matter what I'm doing once I get close to Boulder I stop to take it all in. I forget just how breathtaking it is.
Upon our arrival at my grandparents house it was a marathon of family time. I guess that is to be expected when you take a weekend trip from Oklahoma to Colorado. I didn't really go do many things (Other than spend 10 minutes in an H&M). After all the hugs and greetings and catching up, priority one was taking Buster for a walk- a tradition we started last year. Except this year it was a little more hot than normal, and Buster tuckered out quickly. He made it though, like a champ. It's funny, because my parents have never been ones to travel with animals, and I've had pets my entire life. I don't know how this little guy did it, but he definitely stole all of our hearts.
There are always shenanigans that happen when all four of us cousins are together, this year it was a lot of Pokemon hunting. Which I have to say Colorado had a lot of Pokemon that I had yet to capture, so that was nice. We also made time for some frisbee, card games, and of course the yearly Cosmos Pizza run.
Cosmos is a New York style pizza joint about a block away from the house, it's some delicious stuff. The slices are huge, it's the kind of pizza that you can't stop eating and your sad when it's gone. When you just so happen to be the smallest cousin, you often get used for scale and it worked out that the pizzas we got were roughly the size of me.
After dinner we went on a short Pokemon hunt and then watched Stranger Things on Netflix until we were too tired to watch it anymore. And I will say Strange Things was really great, you should watch it. Also the cinematography was really nice as well. We watched the entire season in 2 days.
Friday night I had agreed to go up into the mountains so that my dad could play with his camera a little. In order to accurately execute our Saturday day seizing it meant that I had to be up and ready by 7 am... on vacation. It was okay though, because I woke up at 6 am without an alarm, which was a disappointing realization of my adulthood. Whatever. I actually don't mind, because the earlier I wake up the more things I can accomplish in a days time.
We Drove maybe 15 minutes out of town and found a good place to stop off. After that we found some bike trails that could take us a little closer on foot. It was really steep though. Obviously, because mountains. And, of course, there were people effortlessly running and biking all over the trail, which was difficult for me to fathom because the altitude difference was exhausting me more than usual. We made it though, and it was of course beautiful and worth the trek.
When we made it back everyone else was finishing up breakfast, and once breakfast was over we were all in full party preparation mode. My job was to take a pre-made cake from Costco and customize it. This involved doing a little bit of cake surgery. I had to remove colorful frosting flower clumps, and fill in/cover up any blemishes left on the cake with white frosting. Then I designed my cake decor and died the frosting so I could execute my design. It wasn't too shabby for my cake decorating debut, but it was also my family. The had no choice but to like it.
The party was hoppin'. I met loads of people that I'm related to that I had never met before. It's always nice to meet more family, right? I honestly didn't know what to expect from this party, but all I know is that my grandparents house was packed. There was hardly room to stand or navigate for the majority of the time, which is always nice. When you are celebrating something its way more fun to share what you're celebrating with as many people as possible.
Buster was the life of the party. He was on his back for the majority of it waiting for people to scratch his belly. He was even well behaved enough to let a baby give him some love. That was precious.
I just had the best time in Boulder. Three days was nowhere near long enough.