Almost September??

Wow, this summer is flying by!! I'm kinda glad because it has been SO gross and hot all summer!  I feel like this has maybe been our hottest summer here yet, and the humidity has been off the charts. I'm hoping some Fall weather is just around the corner!!

I haven't blogged in awhile because we have been busy!!  One fun thing we did was we went into town last week for a Goodbye Party for our friend Timmy. He's going to be traveling the world for 3 months or so, and he had a Happy Hour goodbye party at our favorite bar in town (Good Dog). I didn't take any pictures of the festivities, but I did take a few pictures of City Hall while we were walking in the city!

City Hall! This is when we were walking to the bar from the train station!

And this is City Hall again when we were walking back to the train station at the end of the evening! This is by far my favorite building in the city. It's so pretty. 

Everything else is going well! We had to take Guinness to the vet for some immunization boosters, and he's super healthy and doing well (and still likes to sit like a person sometimes!)

We had our Fantasy Football draft last night, and I'm hoping my team is decent this year so I don't get last place AGAIN and get the loser trophy AGAIN. I always forget to explain that squirrel head trophy to people that are coming to our house for the first time, so people probably think we want to have that squirrel head by our front door...

Other than that, just general house maintenance stuff and a few projects (but nothing that would be exciting for me to take a picture of...), and we're getting SO excited for our trip to Colorado in a few weeks!!  I can't believe it's finally almost here - We've been planning this one for over a year!  I'll do a quick summary, though this post is now going to be crazy long (sorry!!).  

We're flying into Denver, and we're going to spend a few days there. We plan to visit a few breweries (Breckenridge Brewery, Great Divide Brewery, and MAYBE Coors if we have time). We also want to spend lots of time exploring the city and we also might go check out Red Rocks Amphitheater even though there aren't any good shows while we're there! Oh and we found an awesome B&B to stay in while we're there!  It's a big ol' mansion with a ton of history:

After Denver we're heading to Boulder for a few days, and we're staying in a cool place we found on Airbnb, and it's a cute little house right off of Pearl Street, which is where all the cool shops, restaurants, bars, etc are! So that'll be convenient. There are a few cool hikes just outside of Boulder, so we plan on doing those hikes while we're there. And Boulder is also the home of the Celestial Seasonings Factory, which I'm SO excited about!! I'm a big fan of their teas. It should be a fun tour, and I've heard they have a Mint Room that spells amaaazing. And there's also an awesome brewery in Boulder that we'll check out (Avery Brewing). 

After Boulder, we're heading up to Rocky Mountain National Park!!  I'm so beyond excited!!  We found a cool campground in the park where they said you have awesome views and there's tons of wildlife. They said that the elk love the area by the campground and they have a very loud call (it's called bugling) that wakes you up every morning! I'm so excited to hear it :)  We have tons of fun hikes planned, and we're going to explore like crazy for 3 days. 

A bull elk bugling!! I'm so excited!

And after we have camped for a few nights there, we're heading just outside the park to The Stanley Hotel. It's the hotel that inspired The Shining (by Stephen King), and it's SO beautiful (and supposedly quite haunted). We're going on a few tours at the hotel, but we're also just going to spend lots of time relaxing and having fun. It's in a really beautiful area of Colorado (Estes Park). 

The Stanley Hotel!

That's our trip!! We're soooo beyond excited!! 

Mo's Birthday!

Man, I feel really exhausted from this weekend, even though we didn't really do much! On Saturday we went to a morning showing of Suicide Squad. That movie has some terrible reviews, but I was thoroughly entertained! It was no Captain America: Civil War or anything, but I thought it was quite entertaining and not nearly as bad as everyone is saying. After that, we ran a few errands and then also did a few productive things around the house, and we watched some of the Olympics. So, it was a pretty chill day on Saturday!

On Sunday, we went out to breakfast in town, and then after that we met up with McGee's family at Yards Brewery to celebrate Mo's birthday. McGee's good friend Big Mike (the opera singer) leads tours at Yards Brewery, and I'd never been on his tour and neither had anyone in McGee's family (but McGee had been on Big Mike's tour a bunch of times already... haha). It was an AMAZING tour!! Michael is so funny and knowledgeable, and his powerful opera voice is very handy for being able to speak loudly over all of the brewery noise. We had some fun hanging out after the tour was over, and then we also went out to a late lunch.

This is an amazing stone building right across the street from where we like to go to breakfast. Isn't it beautiful?  You'll never guess who lives here... a FRAT.  Yes, a college fraternity lives in this amazing old stone house. I can't even imagine what this poor house goes through... 

Here's Michael leading the brewery tour! He has a beard and is in the red shirt on the right..  And you can see McGee's mom and sister (Mook) on the other side of the room! 

Happy Birthday to Mo!! It was a very fun day. 

This was the sky on the drive back home! So pretty! 

Our Sunday evening was pretty chill, and we watched some more of the Olympics. I'm totally loving the Olympics!!  I'm especially enjoying the men's and women's gymnastics, and all of the swimming events. I'm so sad that it's Monday already!!  Where did the weekend go??  I wish the weekdays flew by as quickly as the weekends!! 

Guinness is just chillin', watching the Olympics with us. He tries to sit like a human sometimes.

A Relaxing and Fun Weekend!

We had a really great weekend! It was a good mix of relaxing and fun. We didn't really do much that was productive... But I'm sure we'll make up for that next weekend. On Friday night we just hung out at home and watched some movies. We also hung up a few pictures in our kitchen!  This was the only productive thing we did all weekend, but it's something we've been wanting to do for awhile. We got a few posters that we loooooved, and so on Friday we framed them and put them up in our kitchen! They probably don't really "go" with our Yuengling dogs picture that's in there, but we love them so we don't care :)

Here they are! It's a Yosemite one and a Grand Canyon one... and they are both quite beautiful! 

And then here's a picture of them along with the Yuengling dog picture... They don't really go together... but oh well :) We love beer (and dogs), and we love National Parks... so... that's our kitchen! :)

On Saturday morning we took Guinness to the dog park, because we knew the rest of the day was going to be really gross and stormy (yet still like 90+ degrees). After that, we dropped Guinness off at our house, and then went out to breakfast at one of our favorite breakfast spots near our house. Shortly after that, we took a train into Philly to meet up with Timmy at his place! Timmy is leaving in a few weeks to embark on an amazing adventure - He is quitting his job, and is going to travel the world for 3 months or so! We're so excited for him, but we'll miss him a lot too. He's going to have a huge Happy Hour celebration at some point soon, but we wanted to have a day of hanging with him so we could have some quality time. We spent a lot of time hanging at his place, and he'd picked up some cheese, crackers, hummus, and chips along with some drinks for us. We spent a few hours hanging there, and then we walked a few blocks to an AMAZING bar that's right near his house in Philly. It's called Monk's (it's a Belgian bar), and it always has an amazing beer selection and awesome food. We all ordered lunch - Timmy ordered a chicken breast sandwich, I ordered beer-battered chicken strips, and McGee ordered a huge pot of mussels. They're known for their mussels and have like 8 or 10 varieties. And all of you beer-lovers will appreciate that they had Pliny the Elder on draft, so that's what McGee and Timmy ordered! We spent a few more hours hanging out with Timmy in town, and then we took the train back home! 

Monk's! 

This is the bar in the back of the building, where we sat! They also have a bar when you first enter the building. 

This is a weird little light that they had behind the bar! 

 On Sunday we didn't do much at all! We pretty much just relaxed all day. We were going to help McGee's sister move into her new place, but McGee's folks called in the afternoon and said that they didn't need help after all. And we were also going to go to a Philadelphia Union game in the evening (it started at 7pm) but it was such a gross day/evening that we decided to just stay home and relax. Our workweeks have been kicking our butts, so it's been really nice that we've been carving out some time to relax on the weekends!

I hope you all had a great weekend, and I hope your week flies by! I have SO many meeting this week... Booooooooo.