Well, here it is, my RU report.

Thursday night, Don finally got home from work, about 5 hours after we had planned on leaving for my parent's house, where Mia was staying for a few days. We had planned on spending the night there and getting an early early start on Friday. Things didn't work out as planned, though, because of some procrastinating on our part in making our give-away. I was up until 1:30 that morning trying to get them finished. At 6am Mia was up and waiting for us, but we didn't get out the door until 8.

Then we drove. A lot. And we stopped a couple of times to feed the baby and stretch our legs and eat lunch. And then we drove a lot again. There was a lot of driving that day. Also, about 40 miles away from Denver, a lot of stopping because our transmission decided not to work anymore.

Finally we made it into Denver at about 8:30pm. Enigma was already there, as was Randy. We chatted with them for awhile and Rose, Abby, and Don went swimming. We ordered some expensive (and not that yummy) food to be delivered. More people showed up. We went to bed.

Saturday morning Rose and Abby were up early, so I got dressed and took them down to breakfast while Don stayed with Joseph in the room and tried to work on our give-away some more. Later, my sister in law, who lives about 15 minutes away from our hotel, came and picked up the girls to spend the day with her.

Finally, RU& got started! A lot of funny, funny, funny things happened. If you weren't there, too bad for you. Hah hah!

No, but really, it was a great day. We played a getting to know you game where we had to remember what everyone's answers to three questions were. (What would be the first thing you would buy with a Billion Dollars? What is your favorite real or fictional Olympic Sport? And, If money was no object, what would you want to do for RU 8?)

I did badly at that game, but better than last year, because this time I had more than 3 hours of sleep before playing.

People gave away their give-aways.

People went to lunch. Don and I had the rest of our leftovers from the previous night's dinner in our room and tried to finish our give-aways. Didn't work. Later we just decided to have everyone help us out and we let them assemble them.

Our give-aways, then, were padded swords. The problem was that I had made the covers just a tad too small, so it was very difficult to put on the swords.

More funny stuff happened, and we watched Sinbad. Which is the best bad movie ever.

Then everyone went to go to dinner, at Casa Bonita, but Don and I were waiting for Don's sister to bring the girls back and deliver her van to us so that we could drive the next day, so we hung out in our room. We had plans to meet up with the group after 30 minutes or so, but it turns out that they don't let you do that. In fact, they did their best to keep us separated. And SilverShotPenaltyCup and Seth were with us because everyone FORGOT them and they got a ride with us. (everyone thought that they were in another car until they got to the restaurant and discovered they were not there.)

My Casa Bonita report: The food was not that great, but the diving shows were pretty funny, and the girls loved it. I had two cheese enchiladas, which were made, I think, with velveeta cheese...

Then we went back to the hotel. The kids and Don went to bed while I stayed up chatting with everyone.

Sunday morning we were up early again for breakfast. The hotel had a pretty decent free breakfast, actually. I haven't had waffles that good in a long time, and I want one of those flippy waffle irons now. I would eat waffles every day if I had one of those. That cleaned itself, magically.

Then we were off to the Rocky Mountain Nation Park. Ahmoacah and LaZorra were in our vehicle. They got to be talked to death by Abby, who didn't stop talking the whole ride, I believe. We got lost but finally made it to Sprague lake, where everyone but Stephen and Mia's vehicle were already waiting for us.

While we were waiting for their car to arrive, I just *had* to yell "There's Stephen and Mia!" and Sam got all excited and then beat me with a sword when he discovered that I lied.

The food was very good, when Stephen and Mia finally showed up. And we fed ducks, and some people, who I shall not name, tried to stomp on ducks and chase ducks away from us. Horses rode through our picnic area and Leen watched them jealously. Abby and Rose beat, pushed, and shoved Enigma around. And then Rose whacked at Enigma with a sword for awhile. She thought that was very amusing, as did the rest of us.

Then we went back to the hotel and broke up for a bit of down time. Maryam, TalkingDog and a bunch of us went in on some pizzas, and hung out in their room for awhile. Don had taken the girls up to bed at about 7pm, and at about 8:30 I went up to bed, also, since I was just about dead from too much tired.

Monday morning was mostly saying goodbye to people, and Don and I trying to find someone to fix our van. We did eventually find someone, but it wasn't done until Tuesday morning, so we spent Monday night at Don's sister's house.

Tuesday morning we picked up our van and drove home. We got home at about 9:30pm and that's about it.

The end.