Mark & Mandy

In June I convinced some friends from Mercury to come out to Colorado. Keren (who is normally based in israel) was over in the states for a few months and I wanted her to come and see Colorado before she went home. Keren, Vikram, Laarni and Justin (her husband that works at apple!) arrived late Friday night for the weekend. In my grand plan to convince people to move to colorado – I have started to put together a list of fun things to do. Its actually a plan to make me and Mark get out and do some colorado activities.

We got up Saturday and decided our first activity would be to head to Golden to the Coors brewery tour. Its free to the public and runs monday through saturday. It took us about 40 minutes to drive to golden and 20 minutes to locate the secret entrance to the brewery. We took a shuttle from the parking lot to the entrance and along the ride our driver gave us some history on Adolf Coors and the town of golden. The brewery looks like a ginormous factory and I was imagining the McKenzie Brothers in Strange Brew…

When we arrived in the main lobby we were all given beer labels that would put us into our group – We lucked out and got Keystone (key-light-baby!).

The tour was very cool – they show you how the hops are processed, the kettles that brew the beer and the packaging plant. When the tour is done they lead you into the tasting room where you get your 3 free drinks.

I like the Blue Moon the best – so did Laarni. Here we are giving a toast to coors.

We also headed to the gift shop where I thought about buying this makeshift hat – but instead I settled on a Beer-Babe shirt!

Day two we decided to head up to Rocky Mountain National Park and take a hike. We met up with Greg and Steven Loewy. We attempted to go to Bridal Veil Falls but they didn’t have parking and sure enough they have a ranger on site making sure we follow the rules. We drover around some more and ended up at the hike to Gem Lake.

It was a short hike (4 miles round trip) but it was definitely a steep one – especially for my non-aclimatized friends. Here we are on the trail…

We did make it to the top, only to realize that it was in fact a pond, not a lake – and it was only about 12 inches deep. The rock formations were pretty impressive.

After a short rest at the top, we headed back down – but first we needed some posed shots with the group and with the girls.

By this time we were starving (for a drink) so we headed downtown Boulder to BJ’s for lunch.

It was a relaxing but very fun weekend – now if I can just convince them to move here!!

geez, I have not been a very good blogger but I have lots to blog about!

In May Chris arranged for an all boys camping trip in Colorado – Julie and I decided this was the perfect opportunity for a girls spa weekend with dogs. Everyone arrived on Thursday and popped over for a BBQ to celebrate Lola’s first birthday. Sumo is a professional traveler and was right at home in colorado!

Julie and I had an amazing relaxing weekend celebrating Julie’s recovery from breast cancer – we had lunch (with yummy cocktails) at Jills and went over to the St. Julian Spa for facials. We spent an entire day in our jammies, but we had the most fun with our dogs.

I think we have blogged about Sumo before – but he is Scott and Julie’s cutest little pug. He gets to do all the cool things like snuggle on the couch and sleep with scott and julie (with the white noise machine to cover up his cute little snores). Here is sumo with uncle mark.

At first Lola was extremely territorial – especially not wanting to share her new birthday toys from Sumo. Lola decided to show Sumo how a destructive Dog behaves…

I happened upon both dogs – Lola’s toy, both dogs, and our floor was covered in dirt. This was something new for Lola – so I assumed that sumo must have put her up to it.

It became pretty clear who the ring leader was…

The dogs had a great weekend, we went for walks in the open space where sumo showed lola how to swim (he learned at the beach in florida). Lola showed Sumo how tough she was by chewing up the kiddie pool.

much of the time was spent wrestling around… Sumo, while a bit smaller, could definitely give Lola a run for her money using his body mass to push her around and then pull her down by her collar – GO SUMO!

Of course Mom was there just in case…

The trip was a success – we realized that Lola and Sumo are great playmates – and I was extremely happy that lots of playing leads to a loooong nap. (sumo made good use of crickets bumper bed).

I think this weekend should be a tradition!