Eat, Drink, Pray, Love

This past weekend was a little taste of heaven. For so many reasons. Among those reasons are a mini-road trip to Loveland, a dog named Mellow, a green pool ball thrown at Mellow, 24 hours of uninterrupted talk time for my darling hubbie and me, card games, booze, a brewery tour and fellowship with fellow church couples, lots of love from my dude, skyping with Nanna and Pappa, an injury free tree cutting mission and happy hour.

Explanation. Tim and I joined a slew of other couples from our church, young and old, for a marriage retreat in Loveland this weekend. Time away to focus on each other's love banks, get to know other couples in the church, talk about what makes marriages tick and tock and enjoy lots of tasty complimentary drinks. Oh, and sleep until you feel like getting your lazy bones out of bed rather than wake up to an immediate rousing game of Hungry Hippos. Tim and I do a lot of girls and guys weekends, so this was a lovely reminder that time away together is an oh so wonderful thing too.

A big group of marriage retreaters went to the New Belgium brewery. Really, it's just an excuse to drink free beer samples. Not so much of a tour.

After you're done sampling, you're free to hula hoop. And so we did.

Our pastor's wife, Sandy, taking in the scenery downtown Fort Collins.

What did we do with the dude you might be wondering? Dude stayed home with our new heroes, Brian and Lindsay. They partied hard, 3 year old style, the entire time we were gone. Along with the addition of this SUPER fun couple came their dog Mellow. You can only imagine dude's nervous glee. We wished them luck and left, very confident that he was in good hands. And he was. He entertained them and vice verse, with only one time out for throwing a pool ball at the dog. Surprising? Not so much. The dog survived. Lindsay and dude even drew pictures of everything they did on the back slider window. See the photo below. Rock star babysitters. THANK YOU Brian and Lindsay for making our LOVEland weekend possible. I'm pleased to report that dude DID miss us, despite his level of parent free fun. He hugged me all day Sunday and kept telling me that he was "so happy to see me from the mountains." Little love.



We also cut down a disease ridden tree by our patio, which we were pretty proud of. Saved the $300 we were told it would cost to cut it down. And Tim didn't cut off any of his appendages, which he was pretty stoked about. Thanks Bruce for lending us your handy dandy chain saw friend. And last, but not least, we celebrated our buds Maria and Tim's new bambino, Maria's birthday and the start of Spring (aka, outdoor happy hour) with our first 2010 happy hour last night. Yum and yeah is all I have to say about that. That wraps up the weekend! Hope yours was just as lovely.