HAPPY ANNIVERSARY (sort of)

Tomorrow is our 4 year anniversary. To celebrate, I brought Derek with me out to San Antonio for the national PA conference. I had to attend this year as a student because I am the Vice President of my class student society. As such, I represented my class in the student PA Assembly of Representatives. It was a fabulous few days of parliamentary procedure and voting on resolutions pertaining to the PA profession and student education. It was interesting enough for me, but also a little too formal for my liking. I prefer to be able to shout out my thoughts in normal English whenever I like which doesn't fly with parliamentary procedure. But, you'll all be happy to know that I played by the rules this weekend. I also got to attend a bunch of workshops on various helpful topics and mingle with fellow PAs and PA students from across the country. I'm pretty sure that Derek is stoked that for years to come many of our anniversaries will be celebrated wherever the AAPA conference is held. YIPPEE!

Although, most of my days were spent attending various conference meetings, I spent all the evenings tromping around San Antonio with my husband. San Antonio is a very cool city! It is almost more like two cities in one. There is the city up on the street, and then, the city down below on the Riverwalk. The Riverwalk is this quaint area full of shops, art stands, and restaurants. It is set up all along the San Antonio river which is lined by paths on either side and has bridges going across the river every few feet. It was really a neat thing to see. The blurry picture above is Derek and I eating dinner on the Riverwalk- we did this almost every night. You walk along, and all the menus are posted. When we found one we liked, we'd stop, eat, and then walk along and look at all the art stands and shops. Kind of fun. Here is a picture I found to give you an idea.

One night, we took a boat ride through the entire Riverwalk, and the guide told us all about the history and architecture of the Riverwalk. That was probably the thing we enjoyed the most. We also saw the Alamo. My history geek of a husband actually went back to the Alamo a second day while I was in a meeting and did an hour long audio tour around the Alamo grounds. He loved it of course, and I, wasn't sad to have missed it.
One night, we stayed in this totally cute little Bed and Breakfast on the river. I had to take pictures to show all my girls that are into interior decorating because this place was so neat. Here is the picture of the place from the outside:
Here is the bed:
The sink in the bathroom which I thought was so fun:
And, our view from the balcony off our room which is sort of hard to see because it was dark. We went out there one night to eat some ice cream. It was so hot in San Antonio (97 degrees and humid- yikes!)
Anyways, it was our first B&B experience. But, it was so fun, and we loved it! At the San Antonio airport, I had to take a picture in one of the rocking chairs. They have them all along the walls of the terminals. I loved the bit of Southern flare they added:
On the way home, we had a 2 hour lay over in Denver. Well, they over-booked our flight and were offering free round-trip tickets to anyone who offered to give up their seats. Derek and I jumped at the opportunity. It was still early in the day, and rather than sit around the airport all day, we rented a car and decided to see what Denver was like before we had to fly out at 9:30 pm later that night.

Of course, the first place Derek wanted to go was Boulder because he wanted to see University of Colorado's football stadium. I honestly didn't see what could be so exciting about a football stadium, but I went along with it because he was good enough to wait through all my long days in conference session in San Antonio. So, of course once there, Derek insisted on taking a picture with the Buffalo:Then, I convinced him to head to the Pearl street mall which is really just a ton of cute shops down the streets of downtown Boulder. We decided that Boulder was similar to Eugene only with mountains and clean/trendy hippees rather than the dirty ones that really could care less about anything here in Eugene. Of course, I couldn't resist a pic outside this shop:
Then, we went to nearby Chautauqau Park. I was dying to hike around on some of the many trails in the park, but of course our bags were on their way to Eugene while we were still in Denver, and I was not really wearing the best shoes for a hike. I settled for some pictures of the gorgeous mountain range in which Boulder sits:
We then left Boulder and drove to Red Rock Park to see the famous Red Rock amphitheatre where many well-known bands have played. It was really pretty neat to see. And, they have a little museum where you can go see all the famous people who have held concerts there. Here there were also all kinds of trails you could hike...that is, if you were wearing proper foot gear.
This was along the road on the drive up to the amphitheatre:
Then, we drove to downtown Denver and walked around the capital building:
Then, after this whirlwind tour of Denver, we were off to the airport again to fly home to Eugene. I decided I absolutely loved Denver with all the mountains, and the green, and the hiking trails just minutes from the city. I am totally pulling for Derek to get a job there after the NY adventure comes to an end.

We got into Eugene at about 11pm which was 1 am San Antonio time. We had woken up at 5:30 am or 3:30 am Eugene time to catch our flight that morning. So, we pretty much drove home and quickly passed out on our bed. Anyways, it was a great and very exhausting way to celebrate our anniversary. I think tomorrow, for our actual anniversary, we will be quite content to sit at home, relax, recover from our jet lag, and go to bed early. Sorry this post is so long, but since I don't scrapbook and actually took some pictures, I figured I better document them somewhere.