July-August 2009

By the end of July we were both eagerly anticipating the wedding and the arrival of two grandchildren that we had yet to meet. Leila with our son Christopher and his wife Jodi and Amelie with our eldest daughter Jo and husband Nigel. Excitement was not really contained at all!
We had organised our cabin to accommodate our children with babies and our camper in the drive for Eleanor and Martin. Our Colorado daughter was to sleep with Aspen in their camper which was in the garage. The best man also ended up in the garage with a tent - some people were concerned about the bears and mountain lions!
It was good to see our children and their spouses relax from all their pressures and have fun together. All four get on well together and have great partners who get on well too.
Aspen and Christopher were fascinated by the babies and their were many and varied encounter groups and joint baths. We hope that distance does not prevent them from becoming good friends as cousins but only time will tell. We certainly plan to do our bit to ensure that they stay in touch but only time will tell.

We all took the opportunity to go to the Gold Rush Days in Buena Vista our nearest largish town. There are food and craft stalls with rides and amusements. We get our annual supply of crystalline honey from one of the stalls - guaranteed to excite the interest of security when we fly back to the east coast!
Aspen liked the pony ride but you had to feel sorry for the ponies.

Wedding fever was growing by the day and we were making some of the final preparations before heading up to Estes Park for the event itself.
Eleanor and Martin had ordered M&Ms printed with their photograph and these were put in to little boxes as table favours for the wedding breakfast.
Mike and Eleanor sifted and sorted music for the iPod although we new Martin might play his choice anyway.