November 24, 2007: Holiday Weekend Fun!

I was able to get take the weekend off after Thanksgiving and use some of my use or lose annual leave before the end of the year. Nolan, Barrett and I took advantage of the time off early Friday to take in the movie "Underdog." Our realtor had called a few days earlier to let us know that her company sponsors a free movie every year. A nice idea. Our friend Sally from Billings, and her kids, JP and James were at the house when we returned home, so the boys enjoyed playing with their friends through midday.

By early afternooon, we were packed up and ready to head up to Estes Park to enjoy the holiday light parade that Kelly and I have been to several times. The parade was great as usual, although it was REALLY cold. Before the parade, we had a great dinner at Ed's, one of our favorite eateries up there (and where a few of you may recall we had breakfast before the wedding back almost 9 years ago).

Earlier in the day, we had decided to use one of our free nights at LaQuinta and head down to Westminster for the night after the parade. We wanted to go see Nolan's hockey coach from Billings and his Bantam A team play one of their games at a tournament there in Westminster Saturday morning. As it turned out, the Billings folks were staying in the same hotel as us so we even got to visit briefly at breakfast. Congrats to coach Jason and the Billings Junior Bulls Bantam A team, as they were able to win the entire tournament and only gave up 1 goal in the entire 5 games they played. Jason informed us that these guys were ranked 16th in the country for their age division! Pretty impressive.

After watching the game, we made several stops to do some shopping around Westminster and then in Fort Collins along the route back north to Cheyenne. We even enjoyed dinner at one of Kelly and I's old hangouts, the Armadillo, in Fort Collins. On our way into the restaurant we saw three reindeer walking down the streets of Fort Collins, and the boys got to get up close with Prancer. They were both amazed and Nolan had been mentioning that he really wanted to see one of the real reindeer. Great stuff!