ESP & Co.

We had some house guests, you gize.

And not just ANY house guests.... these house guests!

Soooooo fun.  They have been kind enough to host us on two occasions thus far so we were happy to be able to provide them room & board for a few days.  They were fresh off a family vacation to Pennsylvania and were nice enough to stop by the great state of Colorado on their way home.

I'll break up the activities & pictures into a couple of posts to save your scrolly wrists undue injury and also to keep your jealous rages to a minimum.

Day ONE (Thursday)

As you may have gathered from my last post, day one did not exactly go according to plan.  Since Anthony is a huge nume  nmenst  coin collector,  we were excited to be able to take him down to the Denver Mint for a tour.  Unfortunately their rental car company's slowness screwed that up and we missed our 11am tour.  No more tours available for like, ever.  Luckily Gty had the smarts way back when to book us a back up tour time at 8am on Friday.  Keep reading to see if we made that one or not, mmkay?

Since JespyFam had been up since 4am and had had nothing substantial to eat, we all decided to go get some yummy mexican food and chillax back at the house for a while.  The kids instantly hit it off & the Esperson/Anderlin Family Vacay was officially underway & shaping up nicely.

Unfortunately there were a few things we had going on that we had no control over/couldn't get out of.  One of those things was Beebs' dance recital which was Thursday night.  Due to the tickets being $12 a piece, and me thinking it would be torture for the Esplin boys, Anthony was forced to take his boys and entertain them at the local ice cream parlor while I subjected Jenny to this:

And this:

And made her look at this:

Take a picture of this:

And pose for this:

That photo is a foreshadowing of Beebs' intense love for Jenny which would blossom throughout the next few days.  She became obsessed, basically.  She'd sit on Jenny's lap, play with Jenny's hair, make Jenny have "Girl Parties No Boys Allowed" up in her room, etc.  She loves Jenny loooong time.   But who doesn't, right?

DAY TWO (Friday)

 Operation Get Tony to The Denver Mint was a success!!  Barely.  We were still running to the gate in hopes that they hadn't locked us out again.  They hadn't.  Loved the mint tour, btw.  It's one of those things we hadn't even thought about doing but now we can recommend it to all our out of town guests.   It costs more than a penny to make a penny.  Did I just blow your mind?  Thought so.

So then we hung around downtown for a bit until the Molly Brown House Museum opened up at 10am.

Did you know her name was Margaret and she never even went by Molly?  They aren't sure why people refer to her as the Unsinkable MOLLY Brown but now they have to call the museum that because no one would know who they were talking about if they called it the Margaret Brown House.  Also, NOT good for kids.  At least not kids like TBone.  No touching, no leaning, no talking, no breathing...he was in tears by the end and I about strangled him.  BUT interesting.  And good photo ops around the outside (no pictures inside, of course).

These next two I'm gonna keep handy for their future wedding video.

We then went back to the house and let the kids mess around for a while as we chatted & what not.  Jenny and I were also able to meet up with Standsmom that day for some yummy lunch at Costa Vida.  So, like, just under half of the SF7 peeps were there and stuff. 

Another thing we didn't have any control over was the fact that JBird's baseball play offs started this weekend.   So yeah...we forced the Espys go watch a game that night.  To their credit they acted excited about it.  Luckily the baseball park had an actual playground (not all of them do) so the little kids could run around and get some energy out and we could just sit & watch the game in peace. 

DAY THREE (Saturday)

Since we had all been up early for the past couple of days we took it easy on Saturday and just got up whenever we felt like it.  Tony & Gty went and ran some errands together (adorable!) and then Jenny & I ran some errands (even more adorable!) and Jenny trained TBone in the finer points of WeRule and ZombieFarming.  He now considers her a genius and they, I guess, trade goods between their kingdoms or something?  I'm not sure but if you ever see anything posted from my Facebook regarding this it's alllll TBone.  Just wanted to make that clear. 

We then had more of this that afternoon:

This time JBird was starting pitcher and he did a fabulous job, got an awesome out at home plate while covering for the pitcher, got a sweet hit to the outfield and pitched like a pro.  They still lost but JBird got to end his season on one of his best hits ever so it was perfect.

As far as the Espys go.... well, they figured out how to entertain themselves at the game.

 I'm pretty sure Jenny is tapping fish tanks or building a castle there.  Btw, we took a wrong turn while walking down to this park (I'd never been there before) and ended up having to wade across a small stream and hack our way through thick undergrowth.  We provide exciting adventures when you come & visit.  ::putting that in our brochure::

These two are good buds now. 

No further pictures were taken this day, but after JBird's game Gty, Anthony, JBird and Cord went down to a Rockies game while Jenny & I took the rest of the kids to Toy Story 3.    I thought it was cute but as the credits were rolling I heard Homer shout "That was BOWING!" You need to see it and decide for yourself I guess.

Coming up next, Days FOUR and FIVE, yo!