Denver!

For months now I've been trying to schedule a trip to Denver to visit one of my best friends from college (who was also my roommate for two years and maid of honor) who recently moved there from Colorado Springs. I was so excited when it worked out for me to plan my "Julia trip" over a long weekend in July. So I took off a couple days of work and hopped a plane to Denver for a much awaited girls weekend.


Friday night we went out with Julia's sweet roommate Amy and met up with some of her other friends. It was so neat to finally meet all the people I had been hearing about and put faces to names. Julia has some super fun peeps and it was great to take in the Downtown Denver scene with them.


Saturday morning we slept in and then headed to the Cherry Creek Farmer's Market close to where Julia and Amy live in a cute little duplex they are renting in the College Park suburb. The farmer's market differed primarily from Pepper Place or a farmer's market in the South mainly because they had less produce vendors and more food vendors. There was actually a pretty significant southwestern flair, with lots of fish tacos and other mexi-type foods for sale.

After a walk in Wash Park, we headed back to get ready for the "Sushi Fusion" supper club Julia and Amy hosted for their friends. They've been doing a weekly supper club and this one was Asian-inspired. Amy has this really fun eclectic food style and taught us all how to roll our own sushi. We had a blast experimenting, and it was great to meet even more of Julia's friends I'd heard so much about, including her old roommates from the Springs who drove up for the night.







We had a little too much fun pan-frying the spring rolls. This was my first attempt at rolling my own sushi. As you can see from my plate, the two rolls on the left side turned out great - the right side, not so much. But it was really yummy.


And, yes, that's Hunter, one of Julia's friends, trying to unclog the kitchen sink which backed up the night of the party. It was quite the ordeal, and every male in the house had to take a stab at fixing it. Three days later (after I was back in Bham) after we took every dish from the party to the sink downstairs, the girls got their sink back to working order thanks to Rotor Rooter after a failed attempt by the landlord. Tree roots had been growing in the pipes! Crazy!

Sunday morning after church we ate at this fun place called the Coral Room in the hippie/indie side of town (think it was called Highlands). We had a great brunch. Their omelet was amazing.


And Sunday afternoon we drove out to Red Rocks for a hike. (My words to Julia when she was explaining where we were headed on the way out: "Red Rocks? You mean like Dave Matthews Live at Red Rocks? I know that place!") So after taking some pics around the amphitheatre (which also hosts these fun summer movie nights) we took a little hike, which seemed like a very Colorado thing to do so I had requested it be added to the weekend agenda.







The hike was nothing too intense, just a fun hour-long hike that gave us lots of time to catch up. Luckily it only started sprinkling right toward the end so we were able to make it back to the car without getting too wet. It never really rained much, but Julia said they often get these random showers in the afternoon.

I had Julia take this shot just to prove I hiked. I'm forcing a smile because some crazy dessert plant bit me while I was trying to get off road to the sign and actually drew blood. At that point I was done with hiking....

...so, we headed to get ice cream at this fun place called Bonnie Bray in a part of town by the same name. Amy and Chris met up with us again and asked me 1) if I could live in Denver (I said I could see myself living there for a season of life - maybe a couple of years - but not permanently) and 2) what's the biggest difference between Denver and Alabama/the South (I said the way people dress. Everyone dresses differently out there with their own style. Let's just say there's not a lot of khaki/polo shirt wearing frat boy twins all over the place.

Coloradans are also way more active, probably even addicted to outdoor pursuits like we are addicted to working, serving on boards, volunteering, scheduling every spare minute of our time, etc. Let's just say if you don't own at least one bike, ski and snow gear, a kayak, and hike 14-ers every other weekend in the summer you wouldn't exactly fit in. It's also a very laid back culture even though life is at a faster pace. In the South, life definitely goes by at a slower place but is not as laid back with our little (and sometimes unspoken) traditions and rules (no white after labor day), etc.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Southern traditions. I'm all about big weddings, and smocked dresses, and black-eyed peas on New Year's. But sometimes we do get a little caught up with all those standards and comparing ourselves and others to them. All that said, when Julia visited back in April one thing she said she loved about Faith and missed about the South in general was all the cute kids dressed in their smocked and seer sucker Sunday finest. Apparently children in Colorado wear Patagonia jackets. I guess that means they do dress alike.

That's just my two cents after Jules and I chatted about the whole differences thing, but what do we know???

(Ok, forgive yet another food picture. Three quarters of my Denver photos involve food of some sort but, hey, it was vacation!) Sunday night we partook in a Black family (Julia's family) tradition - PCA! Every Sunday growing up Julia's family had PCA (popcorn, cheese, and apples) for dinner and watched a movie together, I think primarily because it was a lighter meal to follow the big Sunday lunch her mom always fixed. We kept the tradition up some in college as roomies and resurrected it again on my Denver trip, adding some crackers and summer sausage to the mix.

Monday morning before Jules dropped me off at the airport we ate at this great breakfast place downtown called Snooze. The French Crunch (french toast with fresh strawberries and whipped cream) was amazing. It was nice to get one last chance to chat before we had to say our goodbyes. My flight back was multi-faceted and took the better part of the day (Robert apologetically suggested I hire a new travel agent), but I found even sitting in the airport reading my book was a vacation of sorts - just a relaxing time away from the grind of work, school, and life, and I even finished my book! (Which I'll blog about later.) By 8 p.m. I was back in Bham and thrilled to see my hubby.

I am so thankful when I think about the wonderful girlfriends the Lord brought into my life during college. Though we are spread out all over the country now (Denver, Charlotte, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Decatur, other random towns throughout Alabama, and thankfully some here in the Ham), we are trying to be good about staying involved in each other's lives through regular phone calls, emails, and text messages and by scheduling yearly reunion trips, which is especially important now that most of us are married and we don't have any more weddings to get us all together. We figure if we establish the annual reunion trip tradition early in life we'll be more likely to stick to it when life gets even busier for all of us when kids come along. So for all you special ladies out there (and you know who you are) thanks for loving and encouraging me and being so faithful to live out the gospel in your lives. You're the best friends anyone could ask for. And thanks, Jules, for a lovely time in Denver!