Desparrois Family Vacation on the fly Day 6

The day once again started out early again with a quick trip to the gym. The workout has gotten a little easier here in the Great White North, but honestly my lungs and heart are ready for the return to the low altitude of Midland.

After my workout, Uncle Denny and Cousin Hilde came over. Cousin Hilde was going to go shopping with the girls and Uncle Denny was going to stay and watch football with my dad and I. We enjoyed watching the Red Zone as both the Patriots and Panthers came up short. It would have been nice to see the Chiefs lose as well, but Johnny Manziel just can't live up to his former college days.

For Christmas, Pam had received the wonderful gift of money and a hotel stay up in Black Hawk. This town is known for their casinos. Although we have been there a few times, we have never stayed the night. I decided awhile back, a trip up the mountain for sometime away together and gambling is just what we needed. Pam, being the hardcore degenerate low staked gambler she is, was very excited to go!

Once Pam and the girls got home, we headed up to see if fortune and riches were in our future. We decided to check into to our room first. We had reservations for 4:00 and arrived slightly after that. We waited in line for about twenty minutes to find out that our room was not ready. We learned long ago through our many gambling trips it pays to ask for upgrades and comps. Since our room was not ready I asked if we could get some food comps. Sure enough they were happy to oblige. We hadn't even hit the tables and we already had a win under our belt!

We decided to walk around a bit and find a table to settle down to while we waited for our room. Pam and I found ourselves at the Lucky Lady Casino. We received our new players cards and for signing up they gave us five dollars each in cash and we also each received a twenty dollar voucher for dinner! We still had not hit a table and we were being treated like high rollers and not the low stake degenerate gamblers we are known to be! The only thing we could think of, was that word was out that we were in town and we needed to be taken care of!

Another interesting note is that Pam was carded at each casino we walked in, while I was not. Most people would be a little upset about this. Especially since Pam is much older than I am by a month and six days. Personally I was happy they thought and old man like myself could pick up a hot young woman such as Pam. Perhaps this was playing into all our free comps!

The Lady Luck proved to be anything but Lucky. Although than our free meal, we didn't win a dime. It was time to check into the hotel so we headed back. We got a massive room on the top floor with a great view. Again, they most have known who they were dealing with to provide such a nice place for us.

We decided to take the shuttle to Central City to check out their casinos. We had to wait outside for the shuttle while the temperature was a grand total of eight degrees. For most Coloradans this would be totally acceptable and a non issue. I guess I have been in Texas far too long, as Pam and I were never so happy to get on an old smelly bus!

Our luck changed at the Century Casino as we played Blackjack and visited our old friend, Pat Sajack and his Wheel of Fortune machine. We played until it was time to take the last bus back down the mountain. Pam decided that we needed to go back to the Lucky Lady and reclaim our loses from earlier in the night. We sat down and continued our losing ways and found ourselves with little of our buy in left. I will say that we did get offered another comp from the pit boss. He told us to come by in the morning and he would make sure we got breakfast!

It was late for Colorado time and we live by Texas time, so it was time for bed. We enjoyed the evening and the gambling rolling coaster it came with. With exhaustion settling in we went to bed to prepare for some gambling in the morning and the big game Monday night!

Desparrois Family Christmas on the Fly Day Five

Day five started out early with a purpose. The reason was to get to the gym early and work off some of my belly full of jelly from both the Christmas Eve feast and the Christmas day feast. Not surprisingly I was sluggish and slow and the high altitude of Denver continued to be an issue for my lungs and heart to deal with.

After my workout I had to run by the hardware store to buy a new shutoff valve for a toilet. It was discovered on Christmas morning that one of the toilets in the house was leaking. When I tried to turn the valve off, it completely broke off. Luckily it had stopped the leak, but it shut off the water for the toilet. Being Christmas day, there were no stores open to buy the necessary pieces to fix it.

I knew it wouldn't be a hard fix, so I opted to do it myself rather than have my parents try to find a plumber the day after Christmas, which also happened to be a Saturday. After I got back my dad wanted to wait for me to shut off the water so all the woman folk could shower and get ready for their excursion. Both girls got some loot from Christmas that was burning a hole in their pocket and were ready to shop.

I gave Little D and AK a big kiss and told them to get me something cool! My dad and I got ready as we had plans of our own. We called Uncle Jeffy and Uncle Tom and headed out to Chicago Mike's for a mans lunch of Chicago hot dogs, fries and onion rings. Uncle Jeffy brought Cousin Teagy and Uncle Tom allowed Cousin Garrett to tag along for food, fun and fellowship.

As reported before, Papa loves Chicago Mike's and it is his number one pick to go. In fact, he likes it so much, he has burned Grandma out on wanting to go eat there. He relies heavily on the men of his family to go with him. It has become somewhat of a tradition for us to go when I am in town! 

Everyone enjoyed their food with Uncle Jeffy winning the award once again as the most eaten with taking down two jumbo Chicago dogs, onion rings and most of Teagy's corn dog. Cousin Garrett has reported that his illness has left him and his appetite is starting to come back to life. Hopefully I will get to see him back on the saddle in the eating department before I leave, as watching a hungry Garrett eat can be quite the sight to see!

After lunch it was time to head back to Papa's house and get our best plumber pants on so we could properly have the right amount of crack showing while we got to work. I tried to take the valve off, but it immediately snapped the pipe in the ceiling below. I quickly ran down to the basement to find the drop down ceiling leaking through with left over water in the pipe. I had to take out a few destroyed ceiling tiles in order to locate the break in the pipe.

I knew instantly that we were in trouble and it was going to require some skills to fix. Papa doesn't get around very well and has given some of his tools away over the years. It turns out that he didn't have a saw to cut out the old pipe and replace the new pipe. This created another trip to the hardware store to buy a pipe cutter so I could cut the pipe and return again to get the proper pipe, elbows and another new valve because the other valve was the wrong one. To make a long story short...After seven trips to a variety of hardware stores to find the correct plumbing pieces, a stressed out Papa and Grandma the job finally got done with my handy assistant Pam and happiness to use the bathroom was restored!

It was nice to be able to help my parents out and get the water flowing again. The only bad part was that we had to cancel our plans to see Tony and Lori for the evening since we didn't have a clue when we would get done with the job. 

Pam and I were hungry, exhausted and in need of an ice cold beer. We headed out to a place where the girls could play video games and we could watch the Nebraska game. The girls had a great time playing old school video games. I will say, it amazes me that they can download the most complex games in the word to their Ipads and never ask one question, but, you get them in front of Mrs. Pacman and they ask a million question on how to play!

AK noticed they had a pool table and wanted to play. She has never played before but she was in good hands learning as Pam is a former pool shark and won many bets back in the day. It was fun watching Pam teach AK and Little D the finer points of the game. Little D liked pool, but I think she liked Centipede more.

It was a great way to end a rough and stressful day. All though we had to cancel our plans with Tony I will get to see him Monday night for the Broncos game. After a long day it was time to call it a night and get ready for more fun that day six would bring!

Desparrois Family Christmas on the Fly Day Four

Christmas morning started out what seemed to be extra early since we had a late night while attending midnight Mass and fulfilling Pam's lifelong ambition of eating at Waffle House. We had a grand total of about five hours of sleep when Little D barged into the room announcing that it was Christmas!

Pam and I limped out of bed, exhausted but also excited about what was to come. In my humble opinion, Christmas morning is the best reason in the world to have kids! I love watching my girls face light up with glee as they unwrap gifts with love and excitement in their eyes. There is something special about the holiday that puts everyone in a great mood.

The girls got busy tearing up paper around their gift, while Pam and I watched with happiness in our hearts. The girls got some loot for shopping with Grandma and all kinds of other girly items. Little D was psyched to get a back scratcher and AK could hardly believe that she received makeup and a new phone case. Hands down I received the greatest gift of all from my beautiful and equally talented wife, Pam! She surpassed last years surprise trip to Las Vegas with two tickets to the Broncos Monday night football game! I was absolutely floored. I have not been to a Broncos game since we lived in Colorado over seventeen years ago! Pam definitely won the award for best gift given this Christmas!

                                                                                                                                                                    Papa and Grandma enjoyed their gift exchange as much as the kids! Grandma walked away with a new purse and Papa received a new leather coat. He quickly declared it made him look like the Fonz. We all agreed with the new look he was sporting!

We sat around and relaxed and awaited the arrival of the rest of the family to come over for dinner. Everyone was excited to have yet another feast since we obviously did not enough enough the day before. 

This dinner was going to be a little more special since Pam won a major award this year and received a massive honey baked ham for her efforts. It turns out that a couple of weeks ago Pam got a letter in the mail announcing that she was in the top 100 customers of Jumburrito for the year. Pam's award for efforts of eating many breakfast burritos was a Christmas ham for all to dine on! Good work on this past year Pam, and good luck on this coming year. We are all cheering you on. I have no doubts with a little effort you can win it again for the coming year!

Needless to say the ham was amazing and very good to eat. Everyone went back for seconds including cousin Garrett whose tum-tum was starting to feel better, but not good enough to be declared the winner for the most eaten. That honor went to Aunt Susan who kept trucking on well past everyone else. In fact, when asked if I could take her plate to be cleaned she growled like a savage dog and snapped at my hand! Well done Aunt Susan, we are all proud of you for your first big win and surpassing Uncle Jeffy and Cousin Garrett which is no easy to feat to do!

After dinner the kids continued to run and around and enjoy each other since it is not very often they are all together. Jingle the elf continued his shenanigans from the night before and kept the kids entertained at a high level. Like all good things that night came to end with everyone saying their good bye.

We soon went to bed to try to catch up on sleep and prepare ourselves for a day of fun and a wild rumor that we would get to head out to see Tony and Lori the next day!

Desparrois Family Christmas on the Fly Day Three

Day three started out early again as Uncle Denny would be bringing cousin Hilde over to spend the day with us as he got the unfortunate nod of having to work on Christmas Eve. As always the girls were excited to see and play with Hilde. Luckily Pam and Aunt Susan were on their thinking game the night before and came up with a plan to go the rec center. The idea was to take the kids to the swimming pool to burn off the extra pregame Christmas Eve excitement that usually ends one of the younglings in trouble.

Susan and Pam's plan worked well as the kids had a great time at the pool wearing them down so they could make it into the evening without major incident or inter-family fighting! Auntie Katie was hosting the annual big Christmas Eve feast and present opening event. Grandma had been working hard all week in order to prepare the traditional Italian feast of lasagna and spaghetti for everyone to gorge on!

While waiting for Uncle Denny to arrive from work I decided to gather all the younglings onto the couch and start a protesting chant of "We want our presents!" My hope was that our chant would overthrow the long held tradition of eating first, cleaning everything up and then being able to open presents. I knew the kids would be on my side with getting our loot first. Grandma soon put a stop to our nonsense, and the kids had to find some new way to pass the time while dealing with their eager anticipation of what the night would bring!

Luckily, Jingle, our Elf on the Shelf, made the trip over to Auntie Katie's house and kept the little ones highly entertained as he moved about the house while they looked for him. Uncle Denny finally arrived and it was time for the feast to begin. Everyone over loaded their plates with carb ladened Italian goodies that would have made the mafia proud! We ate, ate, and ate just a little more to make sure we would get our fill until next year. Uncle Jeffy, hands down won prize for eating the most with Aunt Susan coming in a close second and Pam not far behind in third. The award for most disappointing amount eaten went to cousin Garrett as he is usually neck-and-neck with Uncle Jeffy. To be fair,the little fellow has been battling a tummy bug and just didn't have his normal appetite. Hopefully he will start feeling better soon to get back on his game!

After dinner we needed to make sure the entire kitchen was cleaned from top-to-bottom. Uncle Jeffy, as always, was trying to skip out of the cleaning so he could sleep off his food coma on the couch in peace. The eagerly excited younger generation were in no way going to allow the free jungle gym to lay peacefully and declared war on him. Cousin Teagy was sent in first with a flying cannon ball to the gut and Little D followed with a few well-placed roundhouse kicks that landed nicely on the new found home of Jeffy's lasagna. AK decided to join in on the fun with the threat of a nicely placed wedgie! After that it was like a swarm of bees on him making him wish that he helped cleanup and not taken on the award of "Most Eaten"!

Soon enough it was time to open the presents. One-by-one we shared, exchanged, laughed and embraced the joy of family and Christmas together! After all the presents were open and every ones heart was filled with love just as their bellies were still stuffed with sauce, cheese and pasta it was time to wind down the evening!

Each branch of the Desparrois' said goodnight so they could go off and prepare for Christmas in their own homes. We returned to Papa and Grandma's house with the idea of going to midnight Mass. At first, both Papa and Grandma were excited about going. As the time got closer, Papa got more tired and realized that he was going to have to tap out in order to get some rest. Grandma decide it was a good idea and followed Papa to bed.

The Mass was beautiful to attend. After we got done with church it was decided that we would fulfill one of Pam's bucket list items of going to eat at the famous world renowned Waffle House. For years Pam has had the dream of eating at a Waffle House. Some people want to visit the pyramids, some want to to see the northern lights and some have bigger ambitions such as climbing Mount Everest. But not my wonderful wife...her goal was to eat at a Waffle House! Now, please understand if the mother who had to carry around two kids in her stomach for nine months each, go through intense labor pains for hours on end, and squeeze them out while I sat back and watched, wanted Waffle House at one o'clock in the morning on Christmas Day, then by god that's what my beautiful blushing bride of sixteen years was going to get!!!

Waffle House did not disappoint as we had an amazing waitress that was fun and very excited about her job getting to work with others. It's not very often that you come across people who want to go out of their way to make you life better. Our server, Arlington did just that. She was a great person to come in contact with on an early Christmas morning! On a scale of one-to-five waffles, Pam gave her life long dream a rare and uncommon five waffles eaten with a little syrup dripping down her face!

We decided to call it a night as we realized that it was now three o'clock in the morning in Texas. With exhuastion soon setting in we made in home just in time to beat good old Santa Claus! We settled down for a nice winter nap to dream of sugar plums dancing in our heads and other crazy antics that Christmas would bring with the family!

Desparrois Family Christmas on the Fly Day Two

Day Two started out early with me heading to the local recreation center for a quick workout, while Pam chose to stay home and battle the cold with a run around the neighborhood.  It may be my age, but Colorado sure seems colder this year to me than in the past!

The workout on the Elliptical was good other than I found the lack of oxygen as a result of the high altitude a little difficult to deal with. I will say that the recreation center is very nice but rather oddly designed. It has a massive pool equipped with a built in two story water slide, a lazy river, and a massive hot tube that can host an entire college fraternity party. It also contains a huge full size gym. However, it totally lacks any space for the workout equipment. It's as if the designers of the rec center forgot that people might want to workout. They solved this little oversight by putting the equipment out in the hall, which to me felt a tad strange.

After the workout it was time to get home and get prepared for the family outing to see Star Wars. Little D and I have already seen it, but we were equally excited to be going with Pam, AK, Papa and Grandma who had yet to see what Little D is claiming to "be the best Star Wars yet!"

Before the movie we decided that we needed to eat a little lunch and nothing gets you more prepared to see Han Solo take on the First Order like a few Chicken Nuggets from Chick-fil-a. At lunch it was determined that we would all take on different Star War Identities for the viewing of the film. Little D declared quickly that she should be Rey. We all knew that nobody would fit the role of a wookie better than AK as she took on the new role of Chewbacca. Grandma got the nod as General Leia and it was a no brainer that Papa would be Yoda since he had a cane. I got the nod as Han Solo since he is awesome and Pam...Well that's kind of different. Little D and I decided that we couldn't leave out C3PO, and against her protest she was branded to be the golden skinny droid!

Once we arrived at the movie, Pam told the girls that it would be wise to use the restroom before we went in so they could enjoy the show uninterrupted. As soon as Little D came out she would have made Rigo proud as she announced publicly for all to hear that she made a Chewbacca noise while using the restroom!

It goes without saying that everyone enjoyed the movie as much as Little D and I did the first time we saw it. Star Wars has made a profound affect on Little D. In fact, she told me that when she is by herself she sometimes tries to use the force to pick up items. When asked if she has been successful, her response was that she is still in training!

The evening plans were to bring a split in the family. Pam and the girls were going to meet up with Aunt Susan and her kids while Uncle Jeffy and I went to our high school wrestling reunion party at the Varsity INN. I was happy that I decided to go with Jeff as parties and social gatherings are not my thing. It was great seeing some good folks that I have not seen or talked with since I graduated high school many years ago! 

I enjoyed being able to visit with both Coach Sisler and Coach King. They have been  longtime fixtures in the AHS program as they coached me in the little kid program all the way through my senior year. I also enjoyed a very lengthy conversation with an old friend, Marc. What an amazing time catching up and finding out about all the similarities that we have shared throughout this journey in life.

It was soon time to head out as Uncle Jeffy is old and needs to get his rest since he was scheduled to work early in the morning. Pam and the girls were still over at Uncle Jeffie's house, so I went in to see Aunt Susan, Teagy and Tally. The kids were having a great time hanging out and causing a ruckas all at the same time!

The girls were excited to see Unlce Jeffy, as that usually means the jungle gym is open for playtime.















After a lot of fun and good times it was time for us to head back to Papa and Grandma's and declare day two officially in books as we waited in eager anticipation for Day Three which brings more hope, fun, excitement and family as we enter Christmas Eve!

Desparrois Family Christmas on the Fly Day One

Day One:

I have been looking forward to this trip for a long time as I had not seen my parents since late August. I will admit that this trip has not come along with its usual preparation and planning. Work has been busy and Pam and I have both had to travel a bit in the last two months, which means not a great deal of planning time was available. Therefor, I deem this trip the Desparrois Family Christmas on the Fly!

The day started out early as we had a long road ahead and a short time to get there. Heading up to Colorado usually means putting the hurry up offense into full gear and getting to Papa and Grandma's house in record time. This trip would be a little different as we had planned a special small extra curricular activity on the way. We were fortunate because the roads were not crowded, and the skies were clear for an easy passage way to our destination full of Desparrois family fun and crazy antics!

The ride was great as we were making amazing time cruising through the flat lands of Texas. The girls and Pam were snoozing and I was listening to Christmas tunes. We did have one hiccup on the road when Little D had accidentally kicked Jingle, our Elf on the Shelf off of his perch. This caused some mild irritation as Little D was worried that Jingle might lose his elf powers. You see, Little D became the foster kid for Jingle when her all-time favorite kindergarten teacher, Dana Terrebessy decided that we might make a nice family for him! 

Little D knew that Mrs. Terrebessy had strict rules that would make the little jolly fellow lose his powers such as touching him. Little D was especially worried because he fell on the floor of the car, and she might step on him and crush him. Pam, gunning for the Mother of the Year and only having a few days left to do so, quickly jumped into action and carefully picked Jingle up with a tissue so not to touch and safely put him in a place not to be bothered the rest of the way. Little D was happy, and Pam was proud knowing that she continued to to score more points for the big award!

We made it to colorful Colorado and headed straight to our destination of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Pam and I decided that we need to make this special stop for Little D. In the past year she has shown a really strong interest in being in the Air Force and becoming a pilot. When I told her about the Air Force Academy she was sold on wanting to go. She was even more excited to learn that it is in Colorado and that they have a soccer program!

We toured the chapel and went into the visitors center. The chapel alone is a reason for visiting. It is beautiful and amazing all at the same time!

Pam decided the girls could pick out some Air Force garb so we went into the gift store and were happy to see that Star Wars truly is everywhere right now! This picture goes out to Rigo who has now probably seen the movie at least nine times!

After the visit, it was time to hit the road and head up to my parents house. Luckily it is only a quick trip and were were there in no time. The girls were excited to see their Papa and Grandma and Pam and I were happy to be away from the driving!

After visiting for a while we went out to eat and relaxed back at the house in eager anticipation of more family fun and good times!