Denver recap

I flew in early Friday morning and spent the day with Amber and the kids. They were enjoying breakfast, especially Ellie!
Later that afternoon we went to the park by their house so they could show me their neighborhood pool and how good they are on their bikes and scooters. Then we sent Carter on his way to school and the girls went shopping! :)
That night we enjoyed a great dinner and took in a little of the local nightlife. It was so fun to walk around just see how people spend their weekends there. Lots of little restaurants, clubs, shops, etc. There was a band playing on top of a BBQ house adding a little ambiance. It was really fun! I, of course, had the wrong shoes on and did not last long walking around so we didn't stay long. And we were all exhausted from a day in the sun (or could it have been that we didn't get any sleep the night before?) and called it a night pretty early.

After that it was all rugby, all day! Saturday started off with a flag ceremony in the morning and then 2 games that afternoon. They smoked both teams that game, each by 40 plus points! Sunday morning they lost a heartbreaking match to the champion team from last year. The boys had it won, but kinda just gave up in the last minute and allowed a try with 45 seconds to go. They lost by ONE point! So sad. That put them in the afternoon match to battle for 3rd place, which they did magnificently! They had a lot of fun and it was nice to end on a positive note.
Then we headed back to the hotel for them to change and shower so our 12 hour ride home wasn't unbearable. ;) Some of the boys opted to use the pool as a public tub. Pretty sure not all of the hotel guests loved that, but at least they were cool about it. And the boys had a blast!And then we were off! The first couple of hours were really fun. We got a few good laughs out of the music the boys chose to play. About 10 boys decided to drive home with their parents and that left us with mostly polynesian boys. For some reason they all loved the power love ballads from the 80s (Celine Dion, Nelsen, etc.) so we laughed and sang along. There was lots of reggae, and they even got in a little hip hop and rap before Mike and the bus driver "decided" that the radio was broken! After that the ride seemed long and drawn on. We broke down about 1/2 mile from the summit of Parley's Canyon, which set us back another 2 hours. So we finally rolled in at 7 am, 12 hours after we had left Denver! Crazy.

It was a good trip and a good learning experience for everyone involved. Jon does a great job coaching and a few of the boys cried as they told him goodbye. It was very touching for me to see how much he means to them. Maybe I can learn to be less selfish with my time with him during these 4 crazy months out of the year....maybe.