Wrapping up...

Whew!  It has been another crazy, busy two weeks with lots (and lots) of cleaning, organizing, straightening to get our house ready to sell.  We were heading to Ohio for a family reunion for the weekend and decided that would be perfect time to have the house on the market.  It is kind of amazing how clean the place stays when we aren't home.  We may start living in a tent in the backyard.  Anyway, we left Friday morning and our first showings were that morning.  By the time we landed in Cleveland 5 hours later, we had an offer and by the end of the weekend, we had 4 more offers.  We are now officially "under contract" and don't have to keep the house clean anymore!  Yeah us!  If only it could always be this easy.

So now, we actually had some time to relax and do some fun stuff.  Mom took full advantage of that on Thursday and met a friend at our favorite pizza place, Parry's, for an evening of beer and chocolate pairing.  Only in Colorado would you come across a beer and chocolate pairing and it was tons of fun.  The beer was delicious (except for the cucumber beer which tasted OK but smelled like pickles and made pickle burps 5 hours later) and the chocolate was pretty awesome too.  Mom didn't sleep to well that night after 10 pieces of chocolate and a few beers but it was worth it.

We were all up bright and early Friday morning to catch our flight to Cleveland for a weekend of family fun.  We met up with the Albuquerque Walkers at the airport and all headed to historic Wellington to meet up with the rest of the family.  We met Grandma Walker at Fort's Bar for the Friday night Lake Erie perch fish fry (I think it is world famous).  And as luck would have it, the Wellington Cheese Festival (also world famous) was going on as well.  I dragged everyone over so I could play in the jumping castles and play the one game booth they had.  I managed to win yet another stuffie, so my night was good.  It was kind of a late night for us so we all came back to the hotel and crashed.

Saturday, we were up at the crack of dawn and met several cousins and uncles to run in the Cheese Festival 5K.  We were all so excited- in fact, our family were the first 8 people to sign up.  Sadly for us, it was pouring rain with enormous lightning and thunder so the race was cancelled.  Sadness all around!  But we looked good and that was what really mattered.

It finally cleared up and we were able to head out to Grandma's for lunch and farm exploring.  Mom just loves the big old barn and makes me stand in front of it every time we go back, so here is our mandatory barn shot.

Once the barn was out of the way, I headed down to the crick ( not a creek, it's a crick) with my cousin Cait.  We spent the time making leaf boats for the wild berries to float on.  Mom and dad spent the time trying to remember what poison ivy looks like so we could avoid it.

Meanwhile, back at the house, baby Sophia was keeping Uncle Adam and Mr. Walker busy with her own explorations.  This was her first visit and she seemed quite comfortable with the farm life.  Maybe a future career?

This grandma with the grand kids and great grand kids.  We love this picture.

After lunch, Cait, her brother Jack and I got a special surprise.  Cait's grandpa drives the firetruck for the Wellington Fire Department and we all got to ride in the firetruck for the Cheese Festival Parade!  It was great fun waving to everyone along the parade route.  I even saw Nana, Mr. Walker and Dad.  They weren't lucky enough to get to ride with us and man, they missed out!

After an exhausting and late Saturday, we got up early to take Dad back to the airport on Sunday.  He has already started his job in Tucson and had to get back for that.  Everyone else thinks it was just an excuse to get of the family reunion.  We missed him and talked about him a lot.  We spent most of Sunday hanging out with the extended family, eating tons of food, chatting with relatives, playing corn hole etc.

Monday was yet another crack of dawn day to catch our flight back to Denver.  We finally got home around 1 and spent the rest of the day in a daze from exhaustion.
We had recovered a bit by Tuesday and met my friend Collin, his sister Audrey and their mom at the park for a few hours in the afternoon.

Dad got home on Thursday and we started the "wrapping up" portion of our weekend.  Mom had to work on Friday (and she actually worked kind of hard!) so Dad and I hung out and ran errands.  Friday night we headed over to some friend's house for a bar-b-que.  I love, love, love their two kids AND they have a three month old husky puppy.  I was in heaven.  We finally got to bed about 11 which would have been OK except we had my last swim meet of the year on Saturday and had to be at the pool by 6:45. AM.  Can I just tell you how pleasant I was to be around that morning?  It was awesome!!  I actually swam pretty good for a sleepwalker.
Do you think we were done with our day after the swim meet??  Oh, no.  No way!  After my swim meet, I had my last softball game of the year.  I was kind of a teary eyed mess, so much so that the coach came over to ask mom and dad if I was OK.  They just told him what amazing parents they were- letting their kid stay up all hours of the night and then dragging her out of bed at O'dark thirty.
I did recover nicely for the cupcakes and trophies after the game, if you can imagine that.

 We finally finished our day of sports and mom and dad forced me to take a nap.  Despite the fact that I swore up and down I wasn't tired, I fell asleep as soon as I laid down and slept for two solid hours.  So blissful!
It was a good thing I slept because then we went to our old neighbors house for dinner and I ended up sleeping over.  We all know how much sleep everyone gets at those things.  Mom picked me about 11 and the only thing that kept me going was the fact that I had a birthday party to go to at 1.
I held it together pretty well all day but I am bed at 7 this evening.  Probably more for mom's sake than mine!
Dad is headed to Tucson and mom and I are holding down the fort for 4 more days.  The movers come on Thursday, dad comes back Thursday night and we are saying our official good byes to Denver on Friday.  More adventures ahead!