After the hectic pace of last week and a weekend spent in Littleton, my brain refuses to get online. sigh.
Friday morning we left early for the Denver Metro Area. Our first stop around noon was our hotel. It was the Hilton Garden Inn. Oh my gods, what a cluster F&)(c(*)(*!!! We booked the room through Priceline.com. Paid for it on December 6th. This is rather normal for us, as we do our best to get a good deal on a room. And to be honest, we’ve been going to Denver a lot lately on business. We started checking in when the clerk asked for payment, and refused to register us. We explained that we had paid on line over two weeks previous. “Sorry, we never do it that way”, was her line. That started a 90 minute disagreement. We had proof that we’d paid online. Emails, bank statement, etc. She wouldn’t budge. We asked for the manager. “Sorry, he’s gone for the holidays”. Grrrrr….. So, we paid again. This stay had just hit the $200+ mark. We normally pay about $80. Her only consolation was that she gave us tickets for breakfast, as they don’t do a free one. Whee…. $40 worth of breakfasts. We were not impressed.
However, the disagreement had taken so long that we left without ever going up to the room. Instead, we went straight to David and Mari’s house. We had cooled off a bit on the drive over and spending time with David and Mari mellowed us right out. We chatted about knitting while Dan worked on Mari’s laptop. Around 3:45 we had to head out the door in order to be to my sister’s house on time for dinner. Lots of hugs and kisses and promises to be back soon. 🙂
We made it to my sister’s house in 32 minutes. Not bad for across town at the beginning of rush hour on Christmas Eve. Dinner was deli stuff, beer, wine and …drumroll… Cheesecake!!!! Now, you have to understand that I can’t eat dairy of any kind. However, my clever sister Lori made me a SOY cheesecake using a Martha Stewart recipe! Oh my gods it was good. We ate until we were ready to burst and then spent lots of time looking at old pictures that my Dad took. It was a really good evening.
We went back to the hotel, which was an alright room, but not as good as others we have stayed at. We had a cup of tea, a shower and then crawled in bed. The fridge kicked on every 30 minutes with enough noise to wake us up. We tried to sleep in to make up for various long nights and it didn’t work. Between the noisy fridge and a very hard bed, neither of us slept well. We were up by 8am. We got dressed and headed down to breakfast. That was nice. A buffet of fruit, pastries, cereals, and eggs/meat to order. We had omelets, fruit, juice and coffee. Afterwards we headed to Lori’s house in Littleton.
Lori’s was a beehive of activity. Bill was working the smoker while Lori, Mom, Dan and I worked on the rest of the feast. Dad was being a holiday paparazzi taking photos like mad. 🙂 Maybe that should have been Papa-razzi. 🙂 Lori was doing her best to see how many times she could put rabbit ears behind people’s heads.
We opened presents before lunch. Everyone liked the hats I made. I was a bit nervous that Sean wouldn’t care for a lime green polar fleece hat, but he liked it. Mom and Dad loved their book. Dan got Kobolt tools and a tiny pair of vice grips. I got a beautiful Talavera serving bowl. Dad of course took more pictures
Around 3:30pm, we sat down to a dinner of barbecued smoked pork, beef tenderloin, grilled chicken, potatoes au gratin, sweet potato casserole, home made bread, green beens and hominy, and cranberry chutney. It was heavenly. Once again, ate way too much. And yes, I had another piece of the cheesecake as well as a slice of the orange cake that Lori made. Dad took pictures at meal time and had Dan take some too, so that everyone would be in the pictures.
In an effort to not explode, Dan and I went for a walk around my old neighborhood. We went down to the Sundial/Rose Garden and then to Sternes Park. We scared the geese into the lake and had a good time. When we got back, Lori had a game for us to play… Apples to Apples. It was fun, and I won twice. LOL. Afterwards we watched the last quarter of the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals football game. It was really good. However, it was late and we were all sleepy. We said our goodbyes and headed back to the hotel. I will have to return a plate to Lori as I have the last of the cheesecake!!!
When we got back to the hotel, I went to make a cup of tea. No tea cups, no spoon. We looked everywhere. Everything else was where we had left it, but not the tea cups. I went down to the desk and complained. Okay, I stormed down to the desk and growled. The clerk blinked, stammered and went to see if our cups were in the kitchen. He found them and our spoon. His explanation for the removal of our cups were that they looked like the hotel dishes… WRONG. Sorry, Walmart gold and brown cups with a leaf pattern on them and a 1960’s spoon do not look like industrial silverware and Black cups and White plates. GRRRRRrrrr….. We were not pleased. Oh, and Dan figured out what was going on with the fridge. When they put it in the little cupboard, they forgot to tighten down the board that holds it in place and keeps it from vibrating out of the cupboard. He tightened it up and it was quiet. Sigh… So, we washed our cups, had tea and watched the second Mummy movie with Brendan Fraser.
Next morning, we did sleep in a bit, but were still down in time for breakfast. That bed was way too hard to be comfortable!!! We packed up and left by 11am. Home to Walsenburg by 2pm. I swear that there were spy cameras, because we no sooner walked in than the phone started ringing. We finally got to return the truck to Dad around 3pm. We had dinner at Subway, because neither of us wanted to cook. We cleaned up the Christmas stuff, and unpacked from the trip. After that, Dan did some work and I played around on the computer. We were so tired, that we crawled into bed by 9.
And now for a little Christmas past…
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