Much to our surprise and delight, we are having a boy! David and I went to the doctor on Friday and watched in amazement, a 30 minuted ultrasound. We got to see all of his major organ systems and I believe that Willis might have my nose. It was so amazing that we were able to see him so clearly.
We wanted to have a little fun with finding out what we were having. So, instead of having the doctor tell us the sex in the office, we had them seal the ultrasound picture up in an envelope. After the doctor, we headed to Babies 'r Us and picked out a set of blue onesies and a set of pink onesies. We handed them to the cashier along with the envelope. Her job was to open up the envelope and see if it had a boy or gilr on it, and wrap the corresponding outfit. In order to make sure we didn't see what color she was wrapping, we walked around while she put together our surprise. We went back to the cashier when we thought enough time had passed and found our surprise wrapped and waiting for us. We paid and left as the cashier begged us to open it. We told her we couldn't and left to go to a nice dinner. Before our meal came we put the envelope and gift on the table. David looked like he was about to pass out because he was really hoping for a boy but really felt like it was going to be a girl. I think I felt that it was going to be a boy, but because David was so certian that it was a girl, I had some doubts. Anyway, we sat at the table and opened our package of blue onesies! I think David almost fell out of his chair! It was an awesome moment!
We are so excited and feel really blessed to be having a son. We now have the daunting task of trying to come up with a name. We actually had a girl name picked out but can't agree on anything for a boy. So, it will be interesting to see what we come up with. We can't wait until "Willis" joins our family and are looking forward to meeting our son!
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Team Coleman (extended) Family Camping trip 2008
Each year the Coleman family descends on an area for a week of camping. In the past we've done Branson, MO. Black hills, Wisconsin Dells, Nebraska (sounds funny to go camping there), Yellowstone and a few others. In 1997 we went to the great sand dunes national park and it was a lot of fun. So much in fact that we decided to do it again this year. My sister Joanna and her family pulled a pop up from Minnesota and joined us and then all the other Colorado Colemans came along. There were three sisters that didn't make it and they were sorely missed. Laura was busy with her college group who are currently doing a summer outreach on the University of Colorado, Jenny and Josh Duncan who are expecting soon, they didn't make it out from Connecticut where they live. Michelle and Robb didn't make it because she's due any day now with their fourth kid.
The trip officially kicked off for us when the Krussow family (Joanna's) came down and stayed at our house last Wednesday night. We had a quick BBQ at Michelle and Robb's house.
The next morning the Krussow's left for Mueller state park for a couple nights of camping there by themselves.
Team Coleman (us) packed up and headed down Saturday morning. My brother Jon came and followed us down there and my nephew August (Michelle and Robb's oldest) tagged along as well.
It was about a three hour drive to Hecla Junction state park where we were to camp for one night right on the Arkansas river. (here is a you tube video of basically where we were) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkiWTrEVOHs
We got to the campground right around 11:30am and it was super hottttt.
Anna isn't deterred by the heat.
We set up camp in the blazing sun and we were not very impressed with our site, we realized that this campground was primarily used by rafters and people who were using the Arkansas river for recreation. There were tons of rafting tour buses picking people up just outside the campground and it made me wish we were going to raft that day! There was zero shade on our site so from 11:30 until about 2:30 when the Krussow family showed up we sat and baked in the sun. We tried going down to the river but there really wasn't a good place to get in where we tried the first time. Finally when Pete and Jo showed up we help them set up and they happened to have one of those shade tents which we promptly set up and enjoyed the shade. Jenny toughed it out even though the heat got to her and she had to go and sit in the car with the A/C on for a bit. She was a trooper.
That afternoon we just hung out playing ladder ball and enjoying the company. I offered the kids $5 for the first one who came back with a lizard since I'd seen them running around. My niece Leah was the winner!
Jenny and I made a quick run into Salida to get some more ice and when we came back we all went down to the river and stuck our toes in to cool off. That was super refreshing and we were glad we did that.
That evening we saw a beautiful sunset and enjoyed roasting smores around the campfire and talking. Got a good nights sleep with the sound of the river below us hushing other noises.
Woke up and packed up camp fairly early and after breakfast which was delicious. We have these pie irons and were shown by some friends this delicious breakfast treat. You cut a piece of bacon in half and put that in one piece of bread on top of that, crack an egg and put a slice of cheese and cover it with more bread and bacon and roast over the morning campfire. It's a real winner!
We took a short hike along the river with the kids and stopped at an area where there was a lot of drift wood and plenty of rocks and everyone took turns throwing them into the river. This was especially fun for my nephew Ryan who never stopped throwing something the entire camping trip. Here are some pictures from that hike.
After our short hike we took the 1.5 hour drive down to the Great sand dunes national park. http://www.nps.gov/grsa/
We arrived and were pleasantly surprised that we found a. campsites all together (unlike the last one) and b. plenty of shade!
After setting up camp we headed down to the river at the base of the dunes to let the kids splash and play.
After our time playing in the water we went back to camp and laid low for a bit and then Jenny had to make the drive home. :(
She had to work the next day and so she hit the road much to our chagrin. That afternoon was more ladderball and hanging out. My brother Jeremy and his family joined us, his son Asher went promptly to playing in the dirt which was the theme of the week for that guy! Super cute... (Asher not Jer)
That evening after dark we walked to to the amphitheatre and sat through a show about living in bear country. The campground we were in was ultra serious about bear safety complete with the bear proof boxes to store food and garbage. We didn't see any but it was exciting knowing they were around. During the presentation they asked for a volunteer to come on stage and my family volunteered me and I got to go up on stage and be the "bear" They put this bear skin over me and had me down on all fours. She asked if I had just come out of hibernation and I told her with my new gut I'm just getting ready to go in! :)
After that was campfire and bed time. This night I shared a tent with my brother Jon. It was far less comfortable than sharing with Jenny and I think we exceeded the weight limit for that air mattress because around 4am I woke up on the ground. My brother stayed in the air though. What does that say? :(
Monday morning after another bacon breakfast sandwich we were off to the Colorado Gator Farm. http://www.gatorfarm.com/
Anna had woken up about 5:30 that morning throwing up and wasn't feeling good still but she soldiered on and we headed out for the 30 minute drive to see the gators. We stopped twice for her to throw up but the poor things stomach was so empty that all she had left was dry heaves. We learned A Lot about nature that day and it started with a reptile house filled with lizards and turtles and snakes and spiders etc... Some of the kids were even brave enough to hold onto these creatures.
Anna was doing pretty badly and wanted to leave but being the super tough girl that she is she stuck it out. After being there for 30-40 minutes she started feeling better. We even saw one turtle giving another a "piggy back ride"! Which was fantastic!
After seeing some of the bigger crocs we were got to see a young guy "gator wrestle" which was cool. After getting the beasts mouth taped shut he asked for volunteers to hoist him over the fence and my brothers were right spot on for the challenge. (glad it wasn't me)
Then all the kids got to sit on the gator and hold him by themselves for a minute. Best part about that was Anna was first to volunteer.
Guy: Now if any of you kids want to give this a shot raise your hand.
Anna: Fine, I'll do it!
I was proud of her that she bounced back so quickly from feeling so badly the rest of the day.
After the gator farm we stopped by the visitor center for the sand dunes for a while watched a movie on how they were formed and then headed back to camp.
That evening Pete, Jonny, Sara, August, Tyler, Leah and I decided to climb one of the tallest dunes. It's about 700ft but feels like climbing 1,200 due to the fact that it's sand. I'm happy to say that Pete, Jonny, Sara, August, Tyler and Leah all made it to the top. I wussed out about 1/4 mile from the top due to being in extremely poor shape and a bum knee. I was proud of all of the kids for making it up there though, they got to see the sun set over the dunes which was beautiful from my understanding.
That night my parents and two youngest sisters rolled into camp as well as my sister Rebekah and her son Oscar. After the dunes we sat out pretty late by the fire talking and joking etc which was great.
Tuesday
The next morning we had a quick breakfast and headed up to Zapata Falls
http://www.nps.gov/archive/grsa/zapata_falls.htm
It was a nice easy hike up .5 miles and then to the river where you actually hiked the last 300 yards in the river through a canyon to see the falls. It was AWESOME and I was really glad we did that.
Back to camp where I finished packing up grabbed Anna and August (Sara stayed) and we hit the road for home.
It was a good trip and I'm looking forward to next year where we are planning to hit up the black hills again.
The trip officially kicked off for us when the Krussow family (Joanna's) came down and stayed at our house last Wednesday night. We had a quick BBQ at Michelle and Robb's house.
The next morning the Krussow's left for Mueller state park for a couple nights of camping there by themselves.
Team Coleman (us) packed up and headed down Saturday morning. My brother Jon came and followed us down there and my nephew August (Michelle and Robb's oldest) tagged along as well.
It was about a three hour drive to Hecla Junction state park where we were to camp for one night right on the Arkansas river. (here is a you tube video of basically where we were) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkiWTrEVOHs
We got to the campground right around 11:30am and it was super hottttt.
Anna isn't deterred by the heat.
We set up camp in the blazing sun and we were not very impressed with our site, we realized that this campground was primarily used by rafters and people who were using the Arkansas river for recreation. There were tons of rafting tour buses picking people up just outside the campground and it made me wish we were going to raft that day! There was zero shade on our site so from 11:30 until about 2:30 when the Krussow family showed up we sat and baked in the sun. We tried going down to the river but there really wasn't a good place to get in where we tried the first time. Finally when Pete and Jo showed up we help them set up and they happened to have one of those shade tents which we promptly set up and enjoyed the shade. Jenny toughed it out even though the heat got to her and she had to go and sit in the car with the A/C on for a bit. She was a trooper.
That afternoon we just hung out playing ladder ball and enjoying the company. I offered the kids $5 for the first one who came back with a lizard since I'd seen them running around. My niece Leah was the winner!
Jenny and I made a quick run into Salida to get some more ice and when we came back we all went down to the river and stuck our toes in to cool off. That was super refreshing and we were glad we did that.
That evening we saw a beautiful sunset and enjoyed roasting smores around the campfire and talking. Got a good nights sleep with the sound of the river below us hushing other noises.
Woke up and packed up camp fairly early and after breakfast which was delicious. We have these pie irons and were shown by some friends this delicious breakfast treat. You cut a piece of bacon in half and put that in one piece of bread on top of that, crack an egg and put a slice of cheese and cover it with more bread and bacon and roast over the morning campfire. It's a real winner!
We took a short hike along the river with the kids and stopped at an area where there was a lot of drift wood and plenty of rocks and everyone took turns throwing them into the river. This was especially fun for my nephew Ryan who never stopped throwing something the entire camping trip. Here are some pictures from that hike.
After our short hike we took the 1.5 hour drive down to the Great sand dunes national park. http://www.nps.gov/grsa/
We arrived and were pleasantly surprised that we found a. campsites all together (unlike the last one) and b. plenty of shade!
After setting up camp we headed down to the river at the base of the dunes to let the kids splash and play.
After our time playing in the water we went back to camp and laid low for a bit and then Jenny had to make the drive home. :(
She had to work the next day and so she hit the road much to our chagrin. That afternoon was more ladderball and hanging out. My brother Jeremy and his family joined us, his son Asher went promptly to playing in the dirt which was the theme of the week for that guy! Super cute... (Asher not Jer)
That evening after dark we walked to to the amphitheatre and sat through a show about living in bear country. The campground we were in was ultra serious about bear safety complete with the bear proof boxes to store food and garbage. We didn't see any but it was exciting knowing they were around. During the presentation they asked for a volunteer to come on stage and my family volunteered me and I got to go up on stage and be the "bear" They put this bear skin over me and had me down on all fours. She asked if I had just come out of hibernation and I told her with my new gut I'm just getting ready to go in! :)
After that was campfire and bed time. This night I shared a tent with my brother Jon. It was far less comfortable than sharing with Jenny and I think we exceeded the weight limit for that air mattress because around 4am I woke up on the ground. My brother stayed in the air though. What does that say? :(
Monday morning after another bacon breakfast sandwich we were off to the Colorado Gator Farm. http://www.gatorfarm.com/
Anna had woken up about 5:30 that morning throwing up and wasn't feeling good still but she soldiered on and we headed out for the 30 minute drive to see the gators. We stopped twice for her to throw up but the poor things stomach was so empty that all she had left was dry heaves. We learned A Lot about nature that day and it started with a reptile house filled with lizards and turtles and snakes and spiders etc... Some of the kids were even brave enough to hold onto these creatures.
Anna was doing pretty badly and wanted to leave but being the super tough girl that she is she stuck it out. After being there for 30-40 minutes she started feeling better. We even saw one turtle giving another a "piggy back ride"! Which was fantastic!
After seeing some of the bigger crocs we were got to see a young guy "gator wrestle" which was cool. After getting the beasts mouth taped shut he asked for volunteers to hoist him over the fence and my brothers were right spot on for the challenge. (glad it wasn't me)
Then all the kids got to sit on the gator and hold him by themselves for a minute. Best part about that was Anna was first to volunteer.
Guy: Now if any of you kids want to give this a shot raise your hand.
Anna: Fine, I'll do it!
I was proud of her that she bounced back so quickly from feeling so badly the rest of the day.
After the gator farm we stopped by the visitor center for the sand dunes for a while watched a movie on how they were formed and then headed back to camp.
That evening Pete, Jonny, Sara, August, Tyler, Leah and I decided to climb one of the tallest dunes. It's about 700ft but feels like climbing 1,200 due to the fact that it's sand. I'm happy to say that Pete, Jonny, Sara, August, Tyler and Leah all made it to the top. I wussed out about 1/4 mile from the top due to being in extremely poor shape and a bum knee. I was proud of all of the kids for making it up there though, they got to see the sun set over the dunes which was beautiful from my understanding.
That night my parents and two youngest sisters rolled into camp as well as my sister Rebekah and her son Oscar. After the dunes we sat out pretty late by the fire talking and joking etc which was great.
Tuesday
The next morning we had a quick breakfast and headed up to Zapata Falls
http://www.nps.gov/archive/grsa/zapata_falls.htm
It was a nice easy hike up .5 miles and then to the river where you actually hiked the last 300 yards in the river through a canyon to see the falls. It was AWESOME and I was really glad we did that.
Back to camp where I finished packing up grabbed Anna and August (Sara stayed) and we hit the road for home.
It was a good trip and I'm looking forward to next year where we are planning to hit up the black hills again.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Late Night Thoughts
This past Saturday, we packed up what little camping supplies we had and joined David's family for the annual Coleman camping trip (more on that in another post). I was only able to stay for 2 days, so here I sit in an empty house while David and the girls remain in the mountains. It's the first time that I have been alone in this house and I don't like it very much. I've never really liked being left home alone. My parents always talk about how I used to turn on every light in the house when they'd go out. I just always felt scared for some reason. Tonight though, I'm not scared, just lonely. David's phone doesn't get reception in the mountains so I haven't gotten to talk to him. We usually check in with each other throughout the day so I'm bummed that I don't know what David's been doing up in the mountains. So since I can't talk to him, I re-read the previous blog he posted on our anniversary (isn't it sweet?). So as I read his post, some thoughts came to mind...
1. Overall, it's been a year of surprises. Some good, some bad, but all in all, they've been things that have only brought David and I closer together.
2. I love that David has supported me through my homesickness and has never made me feel stupid for missing Texas so much.
3. I am thankful that God has brought me a God fearing man who loves the Lord and wants to always do the right thing.
4. I love David more today than I thought I ever could.
5. It's been a crazy, nutty year and I need a vacation! :)
6. I hope Willis or Wilma has David's eyes and his sense of humor. David can always find the funny in every situation and is the eternal optimist. I wish I was as positive a person that he is all the time!
7. Watching Jon & Kate Plus 8 makes me realize that we're not nearly as busy as they are!
8. Time is passing right before my very eyes! I can't believe we've been married for a year already and before I know it, Willis will be here!
9. David's knee would be fine if we hadn't gone to Belize.
And now I'm falling asleep, so I better call it a night. I could write a ton more, but the sleepiness is taking over. So, sweet dreams everyone and goodnight David! I love you!
1. Overall, it's been a year of surprises. Some good, some bad, but all in all, they've been things that have only brought David and I closer together.
2. I love that David has supported me through my homesickness and has never made me feel stupid for missing Texas so much.
3. I am thankful that God has brought me a God fearing man who loves the Lord and wants to always do the right thing.
4. I love David more today than I thought I ever could.
5. It's been a crazy, nutty year and I need a vacation! :)
6. I hope Willis or Wilma has David's eyes and his sense of humor. David can always find the funny in every situation and is the eternal optimist. I wish I was as positive a person that he is all the time!
7. Watching Jon & Kate Plus 8 makes me realize that we're not nearly as busy as they are!
8. Time is passing right before my very eyes! I can't believe we've been married for a year already and before I know it, Willis will be here!
9. David's knee would be fine if we hadn't gone to Belize.
And now I'm falling asleep, so I better call it a night. I could write a ton more, but the sleepiness is taking over. So, sweet dreams everyone and goodnight David! I love you!
Monday, June 9, 2008
ONE YEAR and counting.
I can't believe it's been a year already. This year has flown by and has been so exciting and full of adventure for us. I love Jenny today more than ever have and can't wait to spend the rest of our lives getting to know and love her more and more. She's AMAZING!
When we got married a year ago I had been writing about the week leading up to the wedding all the way though a good portion of our honeymoon. Jenny has been asking me to finish it for the last year and I never did. Well I decided that today I'd write about the last couple days of our time in Belize and share the whole long story with all of you. It's really long so if you've got time to kill read on. I hope to add pictures to this here at some point but time will tell if that actually happens. Anyhow below are my thoughts from the wedding week through our honeymoon and back home to Colorado. I'm posting this for Jenny's benefit but you all are welcome to read it as well. (obviously)
I love you Jenny!!!
Wedding/Belize
June 5th 2007
The girls and I got up early to head out to the airport. All three of us have been waiting for this day for a long, long time. My brother in law Robb came and picked us up. About half way to the airport I realized that I had forgotten the girls dresses! NOT GOOD.. These dresses have been the Bain of my existence for like a month now and the fact that I left them behind was just the icing on the cake. Robb who was driving his family down to Texas volunteered to swing back by my house and pick up the forgotten dresses. The sooner they arrive in Texas and I don’t have to deal with them the better. What a mess but that’s a long story I won’t go into right now. At the airport the girls were very excited. I managed to run into Mark Swanson (one of my groomsman’s brothers) who was on his way to a great lakes fishing trip. We chatted a while and it was nice to see him and to catch up. Off to Houston!
We were greeted at the airport by my smiling bride to be. She looked amazingly beautiful and I was so relieved to be there, to be with her and to get our week underway. That night we had dinner at the house with some family and then Curt and Tami joined us for a late night swim in the Drenth’s pool and Kerri arrived.
June 6th 2007
Wedding preparations are in full swing, it feels like there are a million things that still have to be done. Jenny and I are both feeling stressed out by all the impending tasks. Jenny is off running around getting things done, buying this and that and organizing everything. How she pulled off all this stuff I’ll never know. Throughout the day there were a lot of errands being run a lot of family and friends showing up and the day ended with a really nice Family meeting/dinner. My family arrived into the Galveston area and the Drenth family and my family met up for a nice seafood dinner. The parents sat together and seemed to hit it off quite well. We sat with some of my family and just enjoyed the company. It was a nice evening and I was glad that we were able to make it happen. We are supposed to go deep sea fishing tomorrow but the Captain of the boat has called once to cancel it and another time to say we are on. It’ looks sketchy that we’ll be able to make it out.
June 7th 2007
This was supposed to be a day of fun and relaxing on the boat with the guys. Spirits were high when I got woken up at a chipper time of 4:15AM to get things ready. Mr. Drenth had bought 8 cases of beer to take on the fishing trip and we had it on ice and were ready to roll. Bob and Adrian left and Cody and I were waiting for the other guys to show up when Bob and Adrian came back in the driveway and rolled down the window and informed us that we were back off. The Captain had just called and said the seas were 7-8 feet and there would be no fishing that day. So here we are, all dressed up and ready to go and now we are off. Felt like getting stood up by a date, not good. Cody I think was the most disappointed and I felt bad for him. After we got cancelled I quickly phoned the guys who were en-route to inform them of the bad news. There was pretty grumpy tired guys who were right around the corner. My brother Jeremy who had woken up his whole family to have them take him to the house was about 5 minutes away when I phoned him. He was not happy but nobody was, what could you do? Anyway so here we are 5:15am a bunch of guys ready to go out and have fun and nothing to do. Mr. D cracked a beer. I thought to myself I’d never had a beer at that time having already slept for the night. I cracked a beer and we decided since we had about 12 guys standing around with nothing to do we should at least go out to breakfast. After breakfast we went to the driving range and then we headed back to the Drenth house. We worked on the yard for a while to get it going for the rehearsal which was held there the following night. I kept thinking, I’ve got to get a nap. After yard work My dad swung by and we headed down to the butcher shop to pick up brisket for the rehearsal, the whole time all I could think about was that I have got to get a nap! After he and I did that my mom came by and we had to go to the grocery store and get crap for the rehearsal. After that I drove her back to Galveston nearly a 2 hour round trip before getting back to the house. All I wanted was a nap! By then it was pretty much too late to even bother. The guys came by that night, Jer S., Travis, Dave VH and Curt since the girls were out on the Batchelorette party. We hung out till fairly late and then Jer, DJVH and I went back to our hotel. All in all I was up from 4:15am till about 1am on this day. This whole sleep thing is becoming a problem.
June 8th 2007
Friday is here! I’m getting married in one more day. Hard to believe, but its true. There is still quite a bit to do so after Jer, DJVH and I get up and get some breakfast I have them drop me off at the house to get to work and they went to the airport to get Hal. One funny thing that happened when the three of us were in the car was DJVH mentioned that they shouldn’t be late to get Hal from the Airport or it might hurt his “feelings”, Shafer had a really disturbed look on his face when he turned and said. “Feelings? Feelings? Are you talking about feelings? We are men, we don’t talk about feelings”. It was a classic moment and we all got a good laugh out of it.
When I got to the Drenth’s house my mom and Jenny’s mom were there working and most of the stuff I had planned to do was already done. Jenny was in fairly rough shape from her late night out so she ended up taking a nap. (sheesh I want a nap!) This day seems like a blur to me. I have no idea what I did most of the day besides get a few things ready, run errands and what not. We had the rehearsal and it was chaotic! There were so many people running around figuring out their spot that it seemed pretty unorganized. Either way most everyone knows mostly what they are to do tomorrow. One thing is for sure tomorrow is going to be an amazing day and most of our close friends and family will be here to see it!
After the rehearsal we headed back to the Drenth’s house for our dinner. There were a lot of people there waiting for us and the house looked amazing! All of Jenny’s parents work was awesome on the house and everything was perfect! They even lined the driveway with candles and such it was sweet. We headed out to the back yard and after my Dad said grace it was time to eat dinner. It was a great dinner, we had BBQ brisket prepared by a few of Mr. Drenths guys from his shop. They did an awesome job and everyone except for Mr. and Mrs. Drenth had plenty to eat. That was kind of a problem and I’m sure I’ll never hear the end of it from Senior Drenth but hey, what can you do? We also had a keg of Shiner, what else and some wine and a good desert. Anyway dinner was great. After dinner there was a “toast” time where people stood up and told stories and such. I thought it would be funny stories and there were a few of those mixed in, but there was a lot of really sincere sweet stories and nice things said about Jenny and I both. There were a lot of tears shed and a lot of things said that you just don’t hear from your friends every day about how they value your friendship. Of all the events of the weekend this section of laughing and crying was one of the more memorable times for me. The video guy was there capturing it so I’m looking forward to seeing that tape when the time comes around.
After that section everyone was milling around and I was handing out some of the gifts I’d collected for the guys who were my groomsman and such when I noticed they were really gathering in tightly around me. I thought to myself this is great they are super excited about their gifts but in actuality that wasn’t the case at all. They were robbing me of my wallet and cell phone so they could throw me into the pool. Once I realized what was going on I didn’t fight it much and I got a nice cool down on a hot Houston night.
After the dinner broke up a few of us headed out to a local night spot to hang out for a while. Jenny and some of her friends took off fairly early as she was still recovering from her party the night before. Jer, DJVH, Hal, Jon, Brad, Gina, Lynette, Curt and I stayed and pretty much closed the place down. Seemed like a good idea at the time, we were having a lot of fun. After that we had a 45 minute drive back to Galveston to our new Hotel. Along the way we stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom and Curt and Shafer got into a classic dual of trying to get the front seat. Jer had shotgun when we got there and when Curt took it from him Jer wasn’t pleased. They tussled for it for I’d say a solid 5 minutes with the highlights being Curt having Shafer shoved up into the windshield and then opening the door and dumping him out of the parked car. Hal and I stayed in the back seat and enjoyed the free entertainment.
Eventually after dropping Curt off we got back to the hotel around 2:45am.
June 9th 2007
It’s here! The big day has finally arrived. It came really quickly too. At about 5:45am the alarm went off and Shafer, DJVH and I got up for our golf outing. 3 hours of sleep was NOT ENOUGH! We picked up Curt and I drove us up to the golf outing while the other guys slept in the car. Once again everyone appears to be getting more sleep than me. The whole drive to the golf coarse in between thinking about the events of the day I keep telling myself that I’ll get a good nap between golf and the wedding.
Golf was a lot of fun we had 6 groups out there I think and Mr. D set us up with a shotgun start. We played a best ball tourney and we really did have a lot of laughs along the way. My team was Curt, Shafer, Travis and myself. The highlights of this day were watching Shafer fan 3x and then hit the 150 yard marker stick. And for the first time in my 18 years or so of golfing I actually drove a par four green in one sweet stroke! That was cool besides that we had fun yelling at the other guys, sticking the flag stick off the green so they’d shoot for the wrong area and unstrapping their bags and all the other stupid pranks. It was super hot and humid again. After golf we grabbed a bite to eat on the way back to the hotel. I was finally going to get my NAP! And when it came it certainly did disappoint. 45 minutes was the length of the long awaited nap. But when the alarm went off and I got up I didn’t feel sleepy at all. It was time to go off and marry the girl I love. We all got cleaned up and drove up to the church after making a DQ stop along the way.
We got to the church and got ready and then……………………Sat there, sat there some more and sat a while longer. 10 guys all dressed up in tux’s and no photographer to capture our brilliance. We ended up waiting a little over an hour for her to show. The whole time I’m thinking, I could still be napping!!!! Oh well as you can tell sleep and I didn’t get to be as close of friends this week as I would have liked. Anyway once the pictures started the next 8 or 9 hours felt like 30 minutes.
Before I knew it we were sitting back behind in the church and waiting for a specific song to come on so we could start the show. I never really did get nervous. I felt the nerves a little bit but it wasn’t at all because I was getting married it was more because we had to stand in front of all those people. Eventually the song played and we marched out.
There were a lot of smiling faces that greeted myself and my posse as we walked out, including the pastor there were 10 of us in all walking out together. Soon after we got out there the ring bearers came down. The best part about that was that the kid who cried and refused to come down the isle at the rehearsal came down smiling with no problems at the wedding. And Jenny’s precious nephew Cole didn’t want to come! So his dad carried him down the isle so Cody will forever be known as my favorite ring bearer. A very memorable moment.
Then came the bridesmaids all eight of them one by one, as they neared the end of the isle the groomsman would go to meet them offer his arm and escort them up to the stage.
Sara and Anna were both Jr. bridesmaides and they were looking great!
After them came the flower girls, Faith Coleman my niece and Adrina Max my Goddaughter. They both looked absolutely adorable walking down together.
Before I knew it I was alone with the pastor at the bottom step. The doors to the back of the church opened up and there she was!
I could barely see her between all the people standing up and the veil on her face but I could tell from a distance that she looked beautiful, the closer she got the more my thought was confirmed. Jenny looked so amazingly hot it was crazy. Her and her dad both had tears as they came down the isle.
Her dad gave me her hand and we walked up to the stage. As we heard the scripture read and heard the songs sang all I could think about was that I’d been waiting for this exact moment my entire life. The ceremony felt like it was 5 minutes long, although I’m sure in reality it was more like 30-40 minutes. I kept looking over Jenny and seeing all the bridesmaids crying.
That more than anything seeing their emotion nearly got me choked up but both Jenny and I managed to keep our composure through the whole ceremony. Before I knew it I heard kiss the bride and he presented us to the congregation and we were Mr. and Mrs. David James Coleman.
Melissa took us down to Galveston and before we could get to the reception we went out on the pier and took some photos of the wedding party there. It was uncomfortably hot but I’m sure those pictures are going to turn out great and it will be worth it.
We finally got to the reception which was at the beautiful Galvez.
http://www.wyndham.com/hotels/GLSHG/main.wnt
We were introduced again and then it was straight to dinner.
The food was amazing, we had prime rib stuffed with crab meat. It was soooo good. Cake, toasts, first dances, bouquet and garter toss last dance all went by far to fast and before we knew it the night was over.
We went through the gauntlet of leaving and Jenny had lavender for the throwing item. It was fine except I managed to get a couple pieces in my eye, so the ride around the block in the H2 was pretty blurry. We walked back into the hotel through the back door and we could still see guests out front so we headed out there again and chatted more. I was very glad we did because upon getting back out there I found both my girls Sara and Anna were very upset. I still have yet to find out exactly what was bothering them so much but both of them were very upset and a lot of tears were coming for both. We said our goodbyes and then Jenny and I headed up to our suite for the night. It was a great day, pretty much everything on this day went according to plan and we were husband and wife. Everything that night seemed right with the world.
June 10th 2007
Melissa picked us up in the morning at the hotel, we stopped by the front sign to snap a couple of quick pictures since there was a congratulatory message for us there and headed up to the Drenth house. From there we visited shortly with Jenny’s sisters and said our goodbye’s tears were shed and then her parents took us up to the airport for our trip down south.
We had time to stop in and get a bite to eat at the airport before loading up on magazines and what not and hopping our flight for Belize. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belize
The minute our plane landed in Belize you know you aren’t in Kansas anymore! The airport was this small crappy building and the differences you experience even there are to numerous to mention.
From there we had a short layover and then we hopped a small 8 passenger plane to Placencia. The look on Jenny’s face when she saw our puddle jumper plane was fantastic, and she was holding my hand real tight most all of the flight. I don’t think she enjoyed it much. We had a brief layover in Dangria before heading back down the runway doing a quick u-turn and taking off over the ocean. After the layover we dropped off the only other two people on our flight and Jenny and I had a private plane the rest of the way. When we got to the Placencia airport it was amazingly small. No gates just a set of double doors that you walk into the one room airport. There was a driver from the resort waiting for us there, he drove us to the resort giving us a few minor details about the resort and the town etc before getting there. The first thought upon getting out on the roads was how beautiful and lush everything there is and yet how poor the people are. After checking into our room we took a quick walk around the resort before grabbing some dinner and heading back to the room to call it a night. We tried watching the Spurs vs. Cavs game 4 of the NBA finals but we lost power somewhere in the fourth quarter. Seems like we lost power pretty much every night when the thunder storms came rolling through. It was a long day anyhow and both of us were really tired and ready for sleep.
June 11th 2007
Got up and enjoyed a nice breakfast before heading over to the marina to set off to our private island for a couple of days. http://www.robertsgrove.com/html/roberts_caye.html
When we got on the boat we were told that the ride would be about 45 minutes. It was Jenny and I and one single guest who you’ll hear more about later. The ride was really cool as it was our first trip off shore into the Caribbean Sea. When we got to the island we were so excited. It was exactly what we had hoped it would be, it was a one acre island with 4 cabana’s and one restaurant/bar, our cabana was well decorated with Myan art. A light and a fan and that was it, nice tile floor shutters on once side but the coolest part in our minds was the porch. Our porch was directly over the sea and you could lower a set of stairs right into the water also there was a hammock on the deck. I think when we got there we went and had some lunch took a brief nap and jumped right in off our deck for some snorkeling. We took a cruise on this day around the little island. We didn’t see a ton of fish but we saw a few and we were amazed at how quickly the depth of the water increased as you went away from the island. After that and some reading and we hit up some dinner. The island was staffed with two people. “Buggy” the bartender and “Melissa” the cook. We hit it off with these two rather quickly and after dinner we sat at the bar talking with these two for quite a while. The other guest we didn’t see much on this first day except for on the boat ride, he took all of his meals at his cabana. We called it a night fairly early, sunset is each night around 6:45pm so it always feels much later than it actually is. There were some amazing thunderstorms that rolled through that night, and being in only this little cabana you could hear everything! It woke us up frequently but it sure was cool.
June 12th 2007
The sun comes up at like 5:05AM here! I know because I woke up this morning thinking it was much later than it was only to find out it was about 5:30AM. I managed to fall back asleep but it does get light early!
This day was a day of pretty much nothing. The thing of note for this morning is that the other guest on the island has managed to give both Jenny and Melissa the creeps. He’s an older guy probably in his mid 60’s and I can’t quite put my finger on it but something about this guy is just off. He doesn’t say much and it seems like he gives a lot of one word answers. Not very friendly to say the least and I guess last night he walked up to the workers room which is above the restaurant and that really freaked out Melissa, Buggy said he won’t answer any of his questions when he takes food to him. The ironic thing about this whole situation is that I have been teasing Jenny for months since we planned this private island deal that I hope there won’t be any psycho’s on the island with us. He doesn’t strike me that way but momentum is building on this guy’s side for pinning him as such.
After breakfast I did a brief snorkel while Jenny read a book which I really enjoyed. There is so much to see when you are underwater. From the surface all you can tell is that the water is clear under there, when you stick your head down there it’s a whole other world filled with plants and many, many animals. Later in the day Jenny and I went for another snorkeling trip and we found some coral where there were teams and teams of beautiful colorful fish. Starfish as big as your head. It really is quite amazing. Also at one point on this day after lunch Buggy, Jenny and I took the kayaks out for a quick trip which was neat. We intended to go to a nearby key but it was waaaaaaay further than it looked and about ¾ of the way there we turned back around. Jenny spotted a sea turtle along the way back which was cool. When we were getting close to our island we noticed Melissa was swimming off the dock and Glen (the creepy old guy) was sitting on the deck watching her. As we got even closer I saw that he had his suitcase with him which was odd since we weren’t leaving until the next day. Jenny asked him if he was leaving and his one word response was “yep”. I guess while we were gone Melissa had realized she was on the island with him by herself and had gotten spooked so she decided to get in the water away from the island a bit and when she looked back he was there watching her. I’m telling you, this guy is building his case. That night we had a delicious dinner, in fact all the food on the island was awesome. We had some sort of seafood for nearly every meal. After dinner we stayed at the restaurant and chatted with Buggy and Mel. After we had spent a good part of the night there we headed back to our cabana. We were laying out on our deck talking and Jenny asked what that light flicking was. There was a light going on, and off, on and off, on and off about every 30-40 seconds. It was coming from Glenn’s cabin on and off, I didn’t’ tell her but when I looked over there I could see his arm sticking out on his porch flicking the light on and off, on and off. This guy has officially built his case for a weirdo! Not long after that the storms rolled in and something about a good storm can add to the intensity of how you let your head play games on you when it comes to being scared. The whole time we had been there I kept saying this guy was harmless and no big deal but this night he got to me. I had been thinking to myself that I thought he was there to off himself but now I was beginning to think he might want to take some of us with him. It was super hot as we laid in bed, we had to close the door and lock it which didn’t help our air flow and I stayed awake as long as possible just waiting to see this guy walk up to our cabana. Well the storm came and passed, I woke up several times through the night and nothing happened we were intact just super sweaty. The guy was truly fruit loops but while we were all there he didn’t harm anyone or anything. He just acted like a mental case. There are far more details to this guy but who cares; he certainly made our stay on the island more memorable.
June 13th 2007
Waking up and knowing nothing had happened was a relief, I finally told Jenny that Glenn had gotten under my skin the previous night as well. We had a nice breakfast again and got another snorkeling in before lunch and our ride back to the resort.
That evening we tried the Mexican restaurant at the resort. The resort is located on a peninsula so this restaurant was on the cove side of the island. In fact here is a link to the resort if you’d like to see it. http://robertsgrove.com/html/index.html
Anyway the Mexican joint wasn’t nearly as good as the other place so this was the first and last time we ate there.
June 14th 2007
On this day we went on the Monkey River tour. When we showed up to the Marina we were met by a nice local man who would be our tour guide for the day. Luckily enough for us we were the only ones on the tour so we had the entire boat to ourselves. After about a 35 minute boat ride through different coastal areas we were at the mouth of the Monkey river. We stopped at a place called Monkey river village. http://www.toucantrail.com/Belize-on-a-Budget/Monkey-River-Town.html
And when they say “village” they mean it. It was a 200 person Cajun village. We were pointed to what looked like a old beat down motel where we were told to go inside and order lunch for the way out. Honestly this did not look at all like a place I’d want to eat. It was so run down and we both were very hesitant to eat at a place like that. Anyway we went in and ordered and went back and waited in the boat and eventually the guide came back and joined us. No idea where he was or what he was doing but we waited for like 15 minutes for him to come back. Anyway we started heading up the river and we realized how fortunate we were to get such a knowledgeable guide. He told us about the history of the area, about he native and imported plant life, birds, animals etc… etc… He was awesome. After seeing a few smaller animals like alligators, turtles, bats, egrets, we beached our boat and went for a short jungle hike. It was soooo hot when we were in there, it must have easily been 98 degrees with 95% humidity. It was amazing to see such dense vegetation though, I’ve never seen anything like that before. About 10 minutes into our hike I could hear what sounded like a bark or a yell. And before you know it we were amongst a family of howler monkeys we were right below them and got to observe them for a solid 15 minutes or so before continuing our hike. On the remainder of the hike we saw large caterpillars all kinds of interesting trees and some jungle CRABS. Not the place you’d expect to see crabs but they were in there. Upon returning to the boat I offered to get in first and give Jenny a hand into the boat. The boat was a good 4.5 feet below the bank where we beached it. Anyway I grabbed on to the sapling next to the boat and took a step and *snap* the sapling was no more and I went knee first into the boat. The good news I managed to save the new video camera. The bad news is although I didn’t find out until a month later I managed to tear cartilage in my right knee on this fall. Oh well at the time it provided some comic relief and I thought I was fine. After the jungle hike and the fall we toured the river some more seeing iguanas, more alligators and all kinds of birds etc. We circled back to Monkey river village and went to the Cajun village for lunch. We both ordered chicken with red beans and rice. Turns out that in spite of the scary appearance the food was amazing!
When we got back to the resort we took a nice long nap and had some good dinner before turning in semi early.
June 15th 2007
This is a day I’d been looking forward to for quite a while. Way back for Christmas Curt had given me a scuba instruction certification class. So all of that stuff was in preparation for this one day. We scheduled a two dive trip for the day. We got up early again had a quick breakfast and headed back over to the marina. There we were greeted by another nice local guy who actually was the same guy who took us by boat out to the island. He was our dive master for the day. http://www.diverobertsgrove.com/dive.html
Belize has the second larges barrier reef in the world behind the great barrier reef in Australia so this is an amazing place to dive.
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9106223/Belize-Barrier-Reef
Again we luck out and are the only ones on the trip. Turns out that we were planning to meet up with another couple later who would meet us at the dive site. There was also a family of four from Cleveland who were heading out for a day of snorkeling. We headed out to laughing bird key which is a national park in Belize. http://www.travelbelize.org/spanish/guide/pa/pa18.html
We took a short break while dropping off the snorkeling folks and waiting for our other diving couple to join us. We walked around the key and enjoyed it’s amazingly crystal blue water and sights. Before long we were off to our first dive location which was Pompeian wall. We got our dive briefing and got geared up and headed down to the wall. We dove to a depth of 80 feet and whisked along the wall (drift dive) which drops straight down 3,000 feet to the ocean floor. It’s an amazing thing to know that you are floating that far above the bottom! On our decent down to 80 feet I had some trouble equalizing likely due to the fact that I had some sinus issues going on. Once we got down to the proper depth I managed to get semi comfortable. We saw all manners of eels, sea turtles, reef fish and coral. Honestly we didn’t see a ton of wildlife on this first dive. At one point during the dive Jenny floated up to about 40 feet or so which freaked me out. I think between not getting equalized properly and it being my first dive and not being 100% comfortable I managed to breath fairly fast and I sucked down my air tank first which meant Jenny and I had to surface first. That was a bummer. But for my first ever dive I thought it was amazing! I was elated, it almost was like watching TV it doesn’t feel real but it was amazing.
The rest of the trip (written June 9th 2008)
Unfortunately I didn’t take the time to write during the rest of our trip. So I’ll do my best to recall the last couple of days in Belize.
We went on a Mayan ruins tour which was really neat they loaded up a group of us into a minivan and we set off inland to see what was left of a the civilization of the mayans from the local area. We went to two different sites and I’m failing to recall the name of the second site but the first one we went to was named Lubaantum it was the bigger of the two sites and it was fascinating learning some history of the Mayan people as well as walking around what was sure to have been an amazing place back in it’s hayday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubaantun
There were legends from the site about a crystal skull that was discovered there. http://www.conspiracyresearch.org/wiki/index.php/Crystal_skull_of_Lubaantum
Also stories of very gruesome things that occurred and this former temple site.
Truly an amazing experience for us to visit that site abandoned so long ago. After that rode to the tour guides house where we were treated to an authentic Belizean lunch. They lived in a grass hut just as you would see in a postcard although the romanticism of a postcard doesn’t capture the reality of living with dirt floors and a straw roof. I believe that they had about 8 people living in that hut that was about 15x30 in size. Really eye opening to see how people scratch out a living. After a delicious lunch prepared by the tour guides wife we took hike through the jungle up to a cave that had a river flowing from it. We were supposed to get to tube through the cave but the water was running to high for it to be safe. It was a very interesting hike through rivers and mud and massive ants etc. Really neat though, when we reached a point where actual climbing would be involved to get to the mouth of the cave we stopped and only a few of us ventured up to the mouth of the cave. Jenny stayed behind and rested with the majority of the group and the tour guide and his son and 3 or 4 of us from the tour climbed up to the cave opening. We were able to get into the water right near a small waterfall and just enjoy the view and environment there. After that we hiked back down and about a mile downstream they gave us another opportunity to jump back into the river. I was a little curious to know what type of animals I’d be swimming with in there but the tour guides son told me not to worry and in we went. Another refreshing dip and swimming against the current for a while and we were back to the van for the LONG ride back to the resort.
The ride would not have been quite so long stay the fact that our van broke down and we had to sit by the side of the road for an hour or so waiting for our “tow truck” to come get us. When it came it was a mid 80’s small Toyota truck that they tied a rope to and towed us back into town. Thankfully we were only about 4 miles outside of town when this happened. We hopped back into the boat for the ride back to Roberts grove.
I think we had a day or two of relaxation after this where we just hung around the resort and swam and enjoyed being there and being together. I can’t recall for sure if it was one day or two but for the sake of reporting this experience I’ll just call it two.
The night before we left was the opening of lobster season which is a big event in Placincia the town near where we were staying. http://www.placencia.com/
We planned to have a nice lobster dinner on our last night there. We sat down to dinner and were amazed at the sheer size of these lobster when they were brought to us, Delicious! Jenny wasn’t feeling all that well so I ate mine and a good portion of hers too. Later that night Jenny started feeling ill and got sick through the coarse of the evening. Then next morning was no better for her though she toughed it out on our puddle jumper back to the main airport and the airplane ride back to Houston.
We were greeted back in Houston by Jenny’s parents which was great, we told them all our stories and caught up with what they had been up to with all the family who stayed past the wedding. Unfortunately Jenny wasn’t feeling any better so we ended up taking her to the emergency room that night where she was promptly tested for everything under the sun and re hydrated with a couple bags of IV fluid.
Her sickness must have come from some bad drinking water or something of the sort but it was violent and lasted for 2-3 days. We stayed in Houston while she was on the mend and just spent time with her parents. During this time I observed her mom caring for her very well and realized that when Jenny was sick in the future I had my hands full trying to live up to the way her mother cared for her.
After she was better we drove back to Colorado and settled in as newlyweds. An amazing adventure and a great start for Team Coleman.
When we got married a year ago I had been writing about the week leading up to the wedding all the way though a good portion of our honeymoon. Jenny has been asking me to finish it for the last year and I never did. Well I decided that today I'd write about the last couple days of our time in Belize and share the whole long story with all of you. It's really long so if you've got time to kill read on. I hope to add pictures to this here at some point but time will tell if that actually happens. Anyhow below are my thoughts from the wedding week through our honeymoon and back home to Colorado. I'm posting this for Jenny's benefit but you all are welcome to read it as well. (obviously)
I love you Jenny!!!
Wedding/Belize
June 5th 2007
The girls and I got up early to head out to the airport. All three of us have been waiting for this day for a long, long time. My brother in law Robb came and picked us up. About half way to the airport I realized that I had forgotten the girls dresses! NOT GOOD.. These dresses have been the Bain of my existence for like a month now and the fact that I left them behind was just the icing on the cake. Robb who was driving his family down to Texas volunteered to swing back by my house and pick up the forgotten dresses. The sooner they arrive in Texas and I don’t have to deal with them the better. What a mess but that’s a long story I won’t go into right now. At the airport the girls were very excited. I managed to run into Mark Swanson (one of my groomsman’s brothers) who was on his way to a great lakes fishing trip. We chatted a while and it was nice to see him and to catch up. Off to Houston!
We were greeted at the airport by my smiling bride to be. She looked amazingly beautiful and I was so relieved to be there, to be with her and to get our week underway. That night we had dinner at the house with some family and then Curt and Tami joined us for a late night swim in the Drenth’s pool and Kerri arrived.
June 6th 2007
Wedding preparations are in full swing, it feels like there are a million things that still have to be done. Jenny and I are both feeling stressed out by all the impending tasks. Jenny is off running around getting things done, buying this and that and organizing everything. How she pulled off all this stuff I’ll never know. Throughout the day there were a lot of errands being run a lot of family and friends showing up and the day ended with a really nice Family meeting/dinner. My family arrived into the Galveston area and the Drenth family and my family met up for a nice seafood dinner. The parents sat together and seemed to hit it off quite well. We sat with some of my family and just enjoyed the company. It was a nice evening and I was glad that we were able to make it happen. We are supposed to go deep sea fishing tomorrow but the Captain of the boat has called once to cancel it and another time to say we are on. It’ looks sketchy that we’ll be able to make it out.
June 7th 2007
This was supposed to be a day of fun and relaxing on the boat with the guys. Spirits were high when I got woken up at a chipper time of 4:15AM to get things ready. Mr. Drenth had bought 8 cases of beer to take on the fishing trip and we had it on ice and were ready to roll. Bob and Adrian left and Cody and I were waiting for the other guys to show up when Bob and Adrian came back in the driveway and rolled down the window and informed us that we were back off. The Captain had just called and said the seas were 7-8 feet and there would be no fishing that day. So here we are, all dressed up and ready to go and now we are off. Felt like getting stood up by a date, not good. Cody I think was the most disappointed and I felt bad for him. After we got cancelled I quickly phoned the guys who were en-route to inform them of the bad news. There was pretty grumpy tired guys who were right around the corner. My brother Jeremy who had woken up his whole family to have them take him to the house was about 5 minutes away when I phoned him. He was not happy but nobody was, what could you do? Anyway so here we are 5:15am a bunch of guys ready to go out and have fun and nothing to do. Mr. D cracked a beer. I thought to myself I’d never had a beer at that time having already slept for the night. I cracked a beer and we decided since we had about 12 guys standing around with nothing to do we should at least go out to breakfast. After breakfast we went to the driving range and then we headed back to the Drenth house. We worked on the yard for a while to get it going for the rehearsal which was held there the following night. I kept thinking, I’ve got to get a nap. After yard work My dad swung by and we headed down to the butcher shop to pick up brisket for the rehearsal, the whole time all I could think about was that I have got to get a nap! After he and I did that my mom came by and we had to go to the grocery store and get crap for the rehearsal. After that I drove her back to Galveston nearly a 2 hour round trip before getting back to the house. All I wanted was a nap! By then it was pretty much too late to even bother. The guys came by that night, Jer S., Travis, Dave VH and Curt since the girls were out on the Batchelorette party. We hung out till fairly late and then Jer, DJVH and I went back to our hotel. All in all I was up from 4:15am till about 1am on this day. This whole sleep thing is becoming a problem.
June 8th 2007
Friday is here! I’m getting married in one more day. Hard to believe, but its true. There is still quite a bit to do so after Jer, DJVH and I get up and get some breakfast I have them drop me off at the house to get to work and they went to the airport to get Hal. One funny thing that happened when the three of us were in the car was DJVH mentioned that they shouldn’t be late to get Hal from the Airport or it might hurt his “feelings”, Shafer had a really disturbed look on his face when he turned and said. “Feelings? Feelings? Are you talking about feelings? We are men, we don’t talk about feelings”. It was a classic moment and we all got a good laugh out of it.
When I got to the Drenth’s house my mom and Jenny’s mom were there working and most of the stuff I had planned to do was already done. Jenny was in fairly rough shape from her late night out so she ended up taking a nap. (sheesh I want a nap!) This day seems like a blur to me. I have no idea what I did most of the day besides get a few things ready, run errands and what not. We had the rehearsal and it was chaotic! There were so many people running around figuring out their spot that it seemed pretty unorganized. Either way most everyone knows mostly what they are to do tomorrow. One thing is for sure tomorrow is going to be an amazing day and most of our close friends and family will be here to see it!
After the rehearsal we headed back to the Drenth’s house for our dinner. There were a lot of people there waiting for us and the house looked amazing! All of Jenny’s parents work was awesome on the house and everything was perfect! They even lined the driveway with candles and such it was sweet. We headed out to the back yard and after my Dad said grace it was time to eat dinner. It was a great dinner, we had BBQ brisket prepared by a few of Mr. Drenths guys from his shop. They did an awesome job and everyone except for Mr. and Mrs. Drenth had plenty to eat. That was kind of a problem and I’m sure I’ll never hear the end of it from Senior Drenth but hey, what can you do? We also had a keg of Shiner, what else and some wine and a good desert. Anyway dinner was great. After dinner there was a “toast” time where people stood up and told stories and such. I thought it would be funny stories and there were a few of those mixed in, but there was a lot of really sincere sweet stories and nice things said about Jenny and I both. There were a lot of tears shed and a lot of things said that you just don’t hear from your friends every day about how they value your friendship. Of all the events of the weekend this section of laughing and crying was one of the more memorable times for me. The video guy was there capturing it so I’m looking forward to seeing that tape when the time comes around.
After that section everyone was milling around and I was handing out some of the gifts I’d collected for the guys who were my groomsman and such when I noticed they were really gathering in tightly around me. I thought to myself this is great they are super excited about their gifts but in actuality that wasn’t the case at all. They were robbing me of my wallet and cell phone so they could throw me into the pool. Once I realized what was going on I didn’t fight it much and I got a nice cool down on a hot Houston night.
After the dinner broke up a few of us headed out to a local night spot to hang out for a while. Jenny and some of her friends took off fairly early as she was still recovering from her party the night before. Jer, DJVH, Hal, Jon, Brad, Gina, Lynette, Curt and I stayed and pretty much closed the place down. Seemed like a good idea at the time, we were having a lot of fun. After that we had a 45 minute drive back to Galveston to our new Hotel. Along the way we stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom and Curt and Shafer got into a classic dual of trying to get the front seat. Jer had shotgun when we got there and when Curt took it from him Jer wasn’t pleased. They tussled for it for I’d say a solid 5 minutes with the highlights being Curt having Shafer shoved up into the windshield and then opening the door and dumping him out of the parked car. Hal and I stayed in the back seat and enjoyed the free entertainment.
Eventually after dropping Curt off we got back to the hotel around 2:45am.
June 9th 2007
It’s here! The big day has finally arrived. It came really quickly too. At about 5:45am the alarm went off and Shafer, DJVH and I got up for our golf outing. 3 hours of sleep was NOT ENOUGH! We picked up Curt and I drove us up to the golf outing while the other guys slept in the car. Once again everyone appears to be getting more sleep than me. The whole drive to the golf coarse in between thinking about the events of the day I keep telling myself that I’ll get a good nap between golf and the wedding.
Golf was a lot of fun we had 6 groups out there I think and Mr. D set us up with a shotgun start. We played a best ball tourney and we really did have a lot of laughs along the way. My team was Curt, Shafer, Travis and myself. The highlights of this day were watching Shafer fan 3x and then hit the 150 yard marker stick. And for the first time in my 18 years or so of golfing I actually drove a par four green in one sweet stroke! That was cool besides that we had fun yelling at the other guys, sticking the flag stick off the green so they’d shoot for the wrong area and unstrapping their bags and all the other stupid pranks. It was super hot and humid again. After golf we grabbed a bite to eat on the way back to the hotel. I was finally going to get my NAP! And when it came it certainly did disappoint. 45 minutes was the length of the long awaited nap. But when the alarm went off and I got up I didn’t feel sleepy at all. It was time to go off and marry the girl I love. We all got cleaned up and drove up to the church after making a DQ stop along the way.
We got to the church and got ready and then……………………Sat there, sat there some more and sat a while longer. 10 guys all dressed up in tux’s and no photographer to capture our brilliance. We ended up waiting a little over an hour for her to show. The whole time I’m thinking, I could still be napping!!!! Oh well as you can tell sleep and I didn’t get to be as close of friends this week as I would have liked. Anyway once the pictures started the next 8 or 9 hours felt like 30 minutes.
Before I knew it we were sitting back behind in the church and waiting for a specific song to come on so we could start the show. I never really did get nervous. I felt the nerves a little bit but it wasn’t at all because I was getting married it was more because we had to stand in front of all those people. Eventually the song played and we marched out.
There were a lot of smiling faces that greeted myself and my posse as we walked out, including the pastor there were 10 of us in all walking out together. Soon after we got out there the ring bearers came down. The best part about that was that the kid who cried and refused to come down the isle at the rehearsal came down smiling with no problems at the wedding. And Jenny’s precious nephew Cole didn’t want to come! So his dad carried him down the isle so Cody will forever be known as my favorite ring bearer. A very memorable moment.
Then came the bridesmaids all eight of them one by one, as they neared the end of the isle the groomsman would go to meet them offer his arm and escort them up to the stage.
Sara and Anna were both Jr. bridesmaides and they were looking great!
After them came the flower girls, Faith Coleman my niece and Adrina Max my Goddaughter. They both looked absolutely adorable walking down together.
Before I knew it I was alone with the pastor at the bottom step. The doors to the back of the church opened up and there she was!
I could barely see her between all the people standing up and the veil on her face but I could tell from a distance that she looked beautiful, the closer she got the more my thought was confirmed. Jenny looked so amazingly hot it was crazy. Her and her dad both had tears as they came down the isle.
Her dad gave me her hand and we walked up to the stage. As we heard the scripture read and heard the songs sang all I could think about was that I’d been waiting for this exact moment my entire life. The ceremony felt like it was 5 minutes long, although I’m sure in reality it was more like 30-40 minutes. I kept looking over Jenny and seeing all the bridesmaids crying.
That more than anything seeing their emotion nearly got me choked up but both Jenny and I managed to keep our composure through the whole ceremony. Before I knew it I heard kiss the bride and he presented us to the congregation and we were Mr. and Mrs. David James Coleman.
Melissa took us down to Galveston and before we could get to the reception we went out on the pier and took some photos of the wedding party there. It was uncomfortably hot but I’m sure those pictures are going to turn out great and it will be worth it.
We finally got to the reception which was at the beautiful Galvez.
http://www.wyndham.com/hotels/GLSHG/main.wnt
We were introduced again and then it was straight to dinner.
The food was amazing, we had prime rib stuffed with crab meat. It was soooo good. Cake, toasts, first dances, bouquet and garter toss last dance all went by far to fast and before we knew it the night was over.
We went through the gauntlet of leaving and Jenny had lavender for the throwing item. It was fine except I managed to get a couple pieces in my eye, so the ride around the block in the H2 was pretty blurry. We walked back into the hotel through the back door and we could still see guests out front so we headed out there again and chatted more. I was very glad we did because upon getting back out there I found both my girls Sara and Anna were very upset. I still have yet to find out exactly what was bothering them so much but both of them were very upset and a lot of tears were coming for both. We said our goodbyes and then Jenny and I headed up to our suite for the night. It was a great day, pretty much everything on this day went according to plan and we were husband and wife. Everything that night seemed right with the world.
June 10th 2007
Melissa picked us up in the morning at the hotel, we stopped by the front sign to snap a couple of quick pictures since there was a congratulatory message for us there and headed up to the Drenth house. From there we visited shortly with Jenny’s sisters and said our goodbye’s tears were shed and then her parents took us up to the airport for our trip down south.
We had time to stop in and get a bite to eat at the airport before loading up on magazines and what not and hopping our flight for Belize. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belize
The minute our plane landed in Belize you know you aren’t in Kansas anymore! The airport was this small crappy building and the differences you experience even there are to numerous to mention.
From there we had a short layover and then we hopped a small 8 passenger plane to Placencia. The look on Jenny’s face when she saw our puddle jumper plane was fantastic, and she was holding my hand real tight most all of the flight. I don’t think she enjoyed it much. We had a brief layover in Dangria before heading back down the runway doing a quick u-turn and taking off over the ocean. After the layover we dropped off the only other two people on our flight and Jenny and I had a private plane the rest of the way. When we got to the Placencia airport it was amazingly small. No gates just a set of double doors that you walk into the one room airport. There was a driver from the resort waiting for us there, he drove us to the resort giving us a few minor details about the resort and the town etc before getting there. The first thought upon getting out on the roads was how beautiful and lush everything there is and yet how poor the people are. After checking into our room we took a quick walk around the resort before grabbing some dinner and heading back to the room to call it a night. We tried watching the Spurs vs. Cavs game 4 of the NBA finals but we lost power somewhere in the fourth quarter. Seems like we lost power pretty much every night when the thunder storms came rolling through. It was a long day anyhow and both of us were really tired and ready for sleep.
June 11th 2007
Got up and enjoyed a nice breakfast before heading over to the marina to set off to our private island for a couple of days. http://www.robertsgrove.com/html/roberts_caye.html
When we got on the boat we were told that the ride would be about 45 minutes. It was Jenny and I and one single guest who you’ll hear more about later. The ride was really cool as it was our first trip off shore into the Caribbean Sea. When we got to the island we were so excited. It was exactly what we had hoped it would be, it was a one acre island with 4 cabana’s and one restaurant/bar, our cabana was well decorated with Myan art. A light and a fan and that was it, nice tile floor shutters on once side but the coolest part in our minds was the porch. Our porch was directly over the sea and you could lower a set of stairs right into the water also there was a hammock on the deck. I think when we got there we went and had some lunch took a brief nap and jumped right in off our deck for some snorkeling. We took a cruise on this day around the little island. We didn’t see a ton of fish but we saw a few and we were amazed at how quickly the depth of the water increased as you went away from the island. After that and some reading and we hit up some dinner. The island was staffed with two people. “Buggy” the bartender and “Melissa” the cook. We hit it off with these two rather quickly and after dinner we sat at the bar talking with these two for quite a while. The other guest we didn’t see much on this first day except for on the boat ride, he took all of his meals at his cabana. We called it a night fairly early, sunset is each night around 6:45pm so it always feels much later than it actually is. There were some amazing thunderstorms that rolled through that night, and being in only this little cabana you could hear everything! It woke us up frequently but it sure was cool.
June 12th 2007
The sun comes up at like 5:05AM here! I know because I woke up this morning thinking it was much later than it was only to find out it was about 5:30AM. I managed to fall back asleep but it does get light early!
This day was a day of pretty much nothing. The thing of note for this morning is that the other guest on the island has managed to give both Jenny and Melissa the creeps. He’s an older guy probably in his mid 60’s and I can’t quite put my finger on it but something about this guy is just off. He doesn’t say much and it seems like he gives a lot of one word answers. Not very friendly to say the least and I guess last night he walked up to the workers room which is above the restaurant and that really freaked out Melissa, Buggy said he won’t answer any of his questions when he takes food to him. The ironic thing about this whole situation is that I have been teasing Jenny for months since we planned this private island deal that I hope there won’t be any psycho’s on the island with us. He doesn’t strike me that way but momentum is building on this guy’s side for pinning him as such.
After breakfast I did a brief snorkel while Jenny read a book which I really enjoyed. There is so much to see when you are underwater. From the surface all you can tell is that the water is clear under there, when you stick your head down there it’s a whole other world filled with plants and many, many animals. Later in the day Jenny and I went for another snorkeling trip and we found some coral where there were teams and teams of beautiful colorful fish. Starfish as big as your head. It really is quite amazing. Also at one point on this day after lunch Buggy, Jenny and I took the kayaks out for a quick trip which was neat. We intended to go to a nearby key but it was waaaaaaay further than it looked and about ¾ of the way there we turned back around. Jenny spotted a sea turtle along the way back which was cool. When we were getting close to our island we noticed Melissa was swimming off the dock and Glen (the creepy old guy) was sitting on the deck watching her. As we got even closer I saw that he had his suitcase with him which was odd since we weren’t leaving until the next day. Jenny asked him if he was leaving and his one word response was “yep”. I guess while we were gone Melissa had realized she was on the island with him by herself and had gotten spooked so she decided to get in the water away from the island a bit and when she looked back he was there watching her. I’m telling you, this guy is building his case. That night we had a delicious dinner, in fact all the food on the island was awesome. We had some sort of seafood for nearly every meal. After dinner we stayed at the restaurant and chatted with Buggy and Mel. After we had spent a good part of the night there we headed back to our cabana. We were laying out on our deck talking and Jenny asked what that light flicking was. There was a light going on, and off, on and off, on and off about every 30-40 seconds. It was coming from Glenn’s cabin on and off, I didn’t’ tell her but when I looked over there I could see his arm sticking out on his porch flicking the light on and off, on and off. This guy has officially built his case for a weirdo! Not long after that the storms rolled in and something about a good storm can add to the intensity of how you let your head play games on you when it comes to being scared. The whole time we had been there I kept saying this guy was harmless and no big deal but this night he got to me. I had been thinking to myself that I thought he was there to off himself but now I was beginning to think he might want to take some of us with him. It was super hot as we laid in bed, we had to close the door and lock it which didn’t help our air flow and I stayed awake as long as possible just waiting to see this guy walk up to our cabana. Well the storm came and passed, I woke up several times through the night and nothing happened we were intact just super sweaty. The guy was truly fruit loops but while we were all there he didn’t harm anyone or anything. He just acted like a mental case. There are far more details to this guy but who cares; he certainly made our stay on the island more memorable.
June 13th 2007
Waking up and knowing nothing had happened was a relief, I finally told Jenny that Glenn had gotten under my skin the previous night as well. We had a nice breakfast again and got another snorkeling in before lunch and our ride back to the resort.
That evening we tried the Mexican restaurant at the resort. The resort is located on a peninsula so this restaurant was on the cove side of the island. In fact here is a link to the resort if you’d like to see it. http://robertsgrove.com/html/index.html
Anyway the Mexican joint wasn’t nearly as good as the other place so this was the first and last time we ate there.
June 14th 2007
On this day we went on the Monkey River tour. When we showed up to the Marina we were met by a nice local man who would be our tour guide for the day. Luckily enough for us we were the only ones on the tour so we had the entire boat to ourselves. After about a 35 minute boat ride through different coastal areas we were at the mouth of the Monkey river. We stopped at a place called Monkey river village. http://www.toucantrail.com/Belize-on-a-Budget/Monkey-River-Town.html
And when they say “village” they mean it. It was a 200 person Cajun village. We were pointed to what looked like a old beat down motel where we were told to go inside and order lunch for the way out. Honestly this did not look at all like a place I’d want to eat. It was so run down and we both were very hesitant to eat at a place like that. Anyway we went in and ordered and went back and waited in the boat and eventually the guide came back and joined us. No idea where he was or what he was doing but we waited for like 15 minutes for him to come back. Anyway we started heading up the river and we realized how fortunate we were to get such a knowledgeable guide. He told us about the history of the area, about he native and imported plant life, birds, animals etc… etc… He was awesome. After seeing a few smaller animals like alligators, turtles, bats, egrets, we beached our boat and went for a short jungle hike. It was soooo hot when we were in there, it must have easily been 98 degrees with 95% humidity. It was amazing to see such dense vegetation though, I’ve never seen anything like that before. About 10 minutes into our hike I could hear what sounded like a bark or a yell. And before you know it we were amongst a family of howler monkeys we were right below them and got to observe them for a solid 15 minutes or so before continuing our hike. On the remainder of the hike we saw large caterpillars all kinds of interesting trees and some jungle CRABS. Not the place you’d expect to see crabs but they were in there. Upon returning to the boat I offered to get in first and give Jenny a hand into the boat. The boat was a good 4.5 feet below the bank where we beached it. Anyway I grabbed on to the sapling next to the boat and took a step and *snap* the sapling was no more and I went knee first into the boat. The good news I managed to save the new video camera. The bad news is although I didn’t find out until a month later I managed to tear cartilage in my right knee on this fall. Oh well at the time it provided some comic relief and I thought I was fine. After the jungle hike and the fall we toured the river some more seeing iguanas, more alligators and all kinds of birds etc. We circled back to Monkey river village and went to the Cajun village for lunch. We both ordered chicken with red beans and rice. Turns out that in spite of the scary appearance the food was amazing!
When we got back to the resort we took a nice long nap and had some good dinner before turning in semi early.
June 15th 2007
This is a day I’d been looking forward to for quite a while. Way back for Christmas Curt had given me a scuba instruction certification class. So all of that stuff was in preparation for this one day. We scheduled a two dive trip for the day. We got up early again had a quick breakfast and headed back over to the marina. There we were greeted by another nice local guy who actually was the same guy who took us by boat out to the island. He was our dive master for the day. http://www.diverobertsgrove.com/dive.html
Belize has the second larges barrier reef in the world behind the great barrier reef in Australia so this is an amazing place to dive.
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9106223/Belize-Barrier-Reef
Again we luck out and are the only ones on the trip. Turns out that we were planning to meet up with another couple later who would meet us at the dive site. There was also a family of four from Cleveland who were heading out for a day of snorkeling. We headed out to laughing bird key which is a national park in Belize. http://www.travelbelize.org/spanish/guide/pa/pa18.html
We took a short break while dropping off the snorkeling folks and waiting for our other diving couple to join us. We walked around the key and enjoyed it’s amazingly crystal blue water and sights. Before long we were off to our first dive location which was Pompeian wall. We got our dive briefing and got geared up and headed down to the wall. We dove to a depth of 80 feet and whisked along the wall (drift dive) which drops straight down 3,000 feet to the ocean floor. It’s an amazing thing to know that you are floating that far above the bottom! On our decent down to 80 feet I had some trouble equalizing likely due to the fact that I had some sinus issues going on. Once we got down to the proper depth I managed to get semi comfortable. We saw all manners of eels, sea turtles, reef fish and coral. Honestly we didn’t see a ton of wildlife on this first dive. At one point during the dive Jenny floated up to about 40 feet or so which freaked me out. I think between not getting equalized properly and it being my first dive and not being 100% comfortable I managed to breath fairly fast and I sucked down my air tank first which meant Jenny and I had to surface first. That was a bummer. But for my first ever dive I thought it was amazing! I was elated, it almost was like watching TV it doesn’t feel real but it was amazing.
The rest of the trip (written June 9th 2008)
Unfortunately I didn’t take the time to write during the rest of our trip. So I’ll do my best to recall the last couple of days in Belize.
We went on a Mayan ruins tour which was really neat they loaded up a group of us into a minivan and we set off inland to see what was left of a the civilization of the mayans from the local area. We went to two different sites and I’m failing to recall the name of the second site but the first one we went to was named Lubaantum it was the bigger of the two sites and it was fascinating learning some history of the Mayan people as well as walking around what was sure to have been an amazing place back in it’s hayday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubaantun
There were legends from the site about a crystal skull that was discovered there. http://www.conspiracyresearch.org/wiki/index.php/Crystal_skull_of_Lubaantum
Also stories of very gruesome things that occurred and this former temple site.
Truly an amazing experience for us to visit that site abandoned so long ago. After that rode to the tour guides house where we were treated to an authentic Belizean lunch. They lived in a grass hut just as you would see in a postcard although the romanticism of a postcard doesn’t capture the reality of living with dirt floors and a straw roof. I believe that they had about 8 people living in that hut that was about 15x30 in size. Really eye opening to see how people scratch out a living. After a delicious lunch prepared by the tour guides wife we took hike through the jungle up to a cave that had a river flowing from it. We were supposed to get to tube through the cave but the water was running to high for it to be safe. It was a very interesting hike through rivers and mud and massive ants etc. Really neat though, when we reached a point where actual climbing would be involved to get to the mouth of the cave we stopped and only a few of us ventured up to the mouth of the cave. Jenny stayed behind and rested with the majority of the group and the tour guide and his son and 3 or 4 of us from the tour climbed up to the cave opening. We were able to get into the water right near a small waterfall and just enjoy the view and environment there. After that we hiked back down and about a mile downstream they gave us another opportunity to jump back into the river. I was a little curious to know what type of animals I’d be swimming with in there but the tour guides son told me not to worry and in we went. Another refreshing dip and swimming against the current for a while and we were back to the van for the LONG ride back to the resort.
The ride would not have been quite so long stay the fact that our van broke down and we had to sit by the side of the road for an hour or so waiting for our “tow truck” to come get us. When it came it was a mid 80’s small Toyota truck that they tied a rope to and towed us back into town. Thankfully we were only about 4 miles outside of town when this happened. We hopped back into the boat for the ride back to Roberts grove.
I think we had a day or two of relaxation after this where we just hung around the resort and swam and enjoyed being there and being together. I can’t recall for sure if it was one day or two but for the sake of reporting this experience I’ll just call it two.
The night before we left was the opening of lobster season which is a big event in Placincia the town near where we were staying. http://www.placencia.com/
We planned to have a nice lobster dinner on our last night there. We sat down to dinner and were amazed at the sheer size of these lobster when they were brought to us, Delicious! Jenny wasn’t feeling all that well so I ate mine and a good portion of hers too. Later that night Jenny started feeling ill and got sick through the coarse of the evening. Then next morning was no better for her though she toughed it out on our puddle jumper back to the main airport and the airplane ride back to Houston.
We were greeted back in Houston by Jenny’s parents which was great, we told them all our stories and caught up with what they had been up to with all the family who stayed past the wedding. Unfortunately Jenny wasn’t feeling any better so we ended up taking her to the emergency room that night where she was promptly tested for everything under the sun and re hydrated with a couple bags of IV fluid.
Her sickness must have come from some bad drinking water or something of the sort but it was violent and lasted for 2-3 days. We stayed in Houston while she was on the mend and just spent time with her parents. During this time I observed her mom caring for her very well and realized that when Jenny was sick in the future I had my hands full trying to live up to the way her mother cared for her.
After she was better we drove back to Colorado and settled in as newlyweds. An amazing adventure and a great start for Team Coleman.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)