#hitchedhollowells

At long last, the wedding event of the year is upon us!!  Saturday evening brought a delightful and delicious rehearsal dinner at the Hollowell home.

Ben took a minute to re-group as this was his third event of the day.

Plenty of cousins and second-cousins around to play with.

The groom and his brother's childhood play-spots were still a hit if maybe not checked for safety in the last decade or so. :)

A happy Nana and her happy boys

Ben LOVED this old bus and spent hours squeezing in and out.

 

 Sunday afternoon brought the wedding and so.much.dancing.........

 

I'm so lucky to call this handsome guy mine.

Ryan and his Aunt DeDe (mother of the bride)

I "borrowed" a few favorites from the professional photographers sneak-peek.  From-The-Hip Photo did an incredible job capturing this day and these two and their style.

Congrats Kacey and Jamie and best wishes for a lifetime of love!!  Thanks for a great party and beautiful reason to celebrate!

Joypark

This morning we had the pleasure of experiencing a member's only grand-opening of the Children's Museum's Joypark.  The outdoor Joypark is just a part of the current expansion which will double the size of the current museum.

There's a great waterplay area.

a stop at an old favorite

Who knew a bunch of giant hay bales could entertain so many kids for so long.

He finally had Dad to help engineer in the ball room.

Despite some initial hesitation, the zipline was a definite favorite.

people's republic

Crazy Boulder is often referred to as the "People's Republic of Boulder."  We started the Summer today with plans for a hike in the Flatirons but Mother Nature had other plans.  Thanks to some still-necessary Boulder errands, we headed up anyway.  The rain stopped long enough for a trip up and down Pearl St to enjoy the different play opportunities and frequent buskers and musicians.  

Just to the left of this pic, there were some musicians playing and Ben walked right in among these "Summer-time transients" (not to be confused with regular Boulder transients, many of whom are bored hippie trust-fund babies) and found a nice spot to listen. He put some change in the musician's case and said hi to them between songs.

Pretty soon a police officer came by and moved us all along.  I was mortified I let my son be possibly confused in this group but he just hopped up and bid everyone a happy, "bye guys." 

I got several compliments on what a cool and unabashed kid he is (as if I play any role in that,) and the compliments would have been welcome if not rife with expletives in clear earshot of said "cool kid."

destruction

We have had a cold, wet, yucky Spring and tonight took things to a whole new level.  I was downstairs watching TV and Ryan happened to notice some crazy weather on the radar on his phone.  He headed to the garage for moving blankets to cover his (newly replaced from the last hail storm) car in case the storm came and sadly the storm hit a while later much too fast for us to react.  By the time the storm was upon us, it would have been potentially deadly to head out in it to cover the cars.  In retrospect, a bike helmet and some blankets might have made it do-able.

Another storm passed through later in the night and had lots more sizable hail.

the string lights were mostly goners and left glass EVERYWHERE

I pulled these out of the hammock seven hours after the first storm

Ben's poor bedroom windows were the hardest hit. :(

*Thanks to the tricks of modern technology, I can blog in "real time," months later.  This storm was the start of LOTS of destruction and despair in the Heimer Haus over the next month, and the catalyst for my way-behind blogging.  Sadly, both cars were totaled in this storm, as well as our roof, some windows, paint, and most of my plants and flowers.  It's also pretty crazy how several bad storms affected our shade for the whole Summer.  We still have ample shade but there is a noticeable difference in missing leaves on the trees.