we slept there and left at 4:40 am to fly out. if only that was the hardest part of that day. so we find out we're flying a different airline than is listed on our tickets and finally get what we think are our boarding passes. the security guy stops us and says that they're not valid (eve though, they had all the info...including the tear off portion with our seats and gate and stuff) anyway, after some deliberation, he let us through. we fly to our 1st layover in atlanta and had a bit of a layover until we left for minneapolis. thats when the issues began. so in minneapolis, they were overbooked and asked people to bump to another flight, and they'd give us free vouchers for another flight. sounds pretty tempting! so we get on the list to do it since we were gonna have to wait for fish to land in denver after us anyway. but we weren't put on the next flight, we were put on another later flight...with an additional layover. so our first 3 hour layover, turned into a 5 hour layover....and now we're going to kansis city before we get to denver. so we get there and our next flight is yet on another carrier...we've been switched now to united. unfortunately, united had a computer crash in the morning so all their flights were even further delayed! so now we wait an extra 2 hours in kansas city.....we finally got to denver around 10pm mountain time, midnight eastern time...after leaving before 5 am eastern time. so needless to say we EARNED those free flights for sure! below is a picture of my boarding passes for our trip out there...keep in mind, these were just for one person to get from NC to denver...should give you a good picture of how crazy our trip out there was!
so we missed out on all of wednesday in denver. thursday, we had a bridal brunch in downtown at this place called snooze. mostly with bridesmaids and other family in town. the boys were going up to the mountains thursday and camping there thursday night for their bachelor evening. so they left in the afternoon and the girls bachelorette started with dinner at a mexican place. we went back to someone's house and toasted and told stories about heidi, played a wild game of spoons and then headed back to downtown denver. we started the evening at a piano bar that has these two guys that use real songs but make up their own words. i guess its a real common bachelorette place. so heidi got pulled up there a few times to join the festivities. the concept was pretty neat but the words to the songs left much to be desired. pretty dirty. :-( so we stayed about and hour and then moved on to the dancing. we took a city bus to some other bar that had a small dance floor. we danced probably until 2 and then started to head home. heidi had a GREAT time...she really lived it up all night. so while we were doing the city thing, the boys were camping out in the most gorgeous place up the mountain i guess. hopefully i'll pictures of that later to add. but they played rediculous games, ate a lot, etc.
friday, we switched to the reception hotel and laid out by the pool for a little bit before the rehersal. i had some work for the eagles to do and i got that done while sitting at panera with annie. (we spent a ton of time together while the boys were all busy) did the rehersal thing and then went to maggiano's for the dinner. really good food, and a lot of toasting. apparently everyone in sam's family likes to talk! people said some real great stuff about the two of them and sam spoke about heidi too. there was some great mention of the Lord and His role in their lives which was awesome because there were a lot of unsaved people there. it was really was very obvious all weekend that they were intentional about using their wedding as a window to their faith.
saturday morning aaron and i got up real early and drove out to the mountains since i still hadn't seen them yet. imagine being too busy to see the rockies when you're in denver! that wasn't an option we drove out. it is so beautiful! i'm really glad we did it. it was also good to spend some time with aaron because most of the weekend we were staying with and hanging out with tons of other people. we got back and then left for the wedding!
the ceremony was great, and aaron even got to play a little prank on sam there, and then the party began. these people love to have a good time! the reception went till 10 and everyone was dancing the whole time! my kind of party! there was the usual, toasting, cake, garder, etc events and all that good stuff. after the wedding all us young folks stayed up and hung out outside playing some games and eating some pizza. good times. then it was time to go! a very busy, fun, sleepless trip to denver!
there was a fairly small messiah crew there...only the ones in it pretty much but it was great to see the ones that were there! anyway, the trip back was much less eventful....saturday i had to switch everything around cause our tickets were still all messed up, but once we got to the airport it was smooth sailing! it took us like 10 less hours to get home. craziness! so now we're having fun brainstorming where to fly with our vouchers!
