Visitors and a Legacy

It was fun to have Arlene and Ron out here for a couple days last weekend! Of course I didn't take enough pictures, but we just relaxed most of the time. They got here Friday a little before noon. It was a gorgeous sunny day, only around 72 degrees out. I couldn't stand to sit at work and since I already had quite a bit of overtime, I took off around 1 pm. We ended up taking a walk through the dog park to enjoy the weather. Perdi made us all laugh with her yelping as she chased Pongo around. She's quite loud when she gets going, but it's cute.

I made one of our favorite chicken/pasta dinners Friday night after we went to do a little wine tasting. We also had fresh bread from the bread machine, which I enjoy making but don't do enough of it!

I was ready for bed at 9:45 pm, which is pretty early for me. But after the wine and the food, my body was craving sleep! Saturday, we drove Ron and Arlene around Denver to show them where we work. We also had lunch at Pat's, our favorite cheesesteak restaurant. We watched some football in the afternoon and then went downtown on the light rail for dinner at the Chop House. It was SOOO good. Very fancy too.

They left Sunday before noon, after a breakfast of French toast. We sent them off with a bag of snacks for the road. :) It was a bit of a role-reversal, as Matt and I are usually the ones who get the breakfast and bag of food before we drive back to Denver.

Sunday afternoon, I went for a run and noticed that the tall mountains were capped with snow. It is becoming one of my favorite things to see the first snow in the mountains from town. I was very excited...ski season will be upon us soon!

The other excitement of the weekend is that I won in BOTH of my fantasy football leagues. It was pretty close in one of them...but it is pretty uncommon that I win so much right off the bat. I hope this keeps up!
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I have been captivated lately by the death of Senator Ted Kennedy, so I thought I would write a bit about my thoughts on this tonight. I know his death occurred a couple weeks ago, but the health care debate has been raging on since then and he was such a huge proponent of health care reform.

I have never before been really captivated by the whole Kennedy family, at least not to the degree that our parents' generation was. I am mostly claiming ignorance here...I just have never done much research on the Kennedy's. Most of their tragedies occurred before I was born. In fact, I didn't even know that Ted was the youngest of the Kennedy brothers! How sad is that.

I have been learning much about Ted and the Kennedy family lately, after reading an article in People Magazine about senator Kennedy's life. He is also a pretty common topic in some of the podcasts I am listening to, which I am a couple weeks behind in. Of particular interest to me is the fact that Ted Kennedy had been a senator for 46 years. This is incomprehensible to me. The man had been in office for 20 years already when I was BORN!

I know he had many downfalls, including the whole incident at Chappaquiddick and lots of drinking problems. But I was touched to hear about his compassion for the sick and uninsured people of the U.S., and that he really got involved in health care reform when his son Ted, Jr. was sick with cancer. He met many people who couldn't afford their health care, and felt so grateful that he could afford health care for Ted Jr's cancer treatment, that he devoted the rest of his senatorial career to fixing health care in America. In addition, Ted Kennedy also helped some people pay for their medical treatments from his own pocket.

I am really glad that I have taken a few hours lately to research and learn about the Kennedys. I think I understand more about the fascination previous generations had with the family. I have definitely been swept up in it as of late. I can't help but feel that with Ted Kennedy's death (and Eunice Kennedy Shriver's death a few weeks ago), the end of a major political legacy has come. However, I do hope that our leaders continue to dilligently work on the issues with our health care system in the near future with the same passion as Senator Kennedy has done for the past 46 years.