into the west

Anne and I have been dating for almost 9 years and I have never met her extended family. She's had to deal with mine from almost day-one, but I've never met hers.... until this weekend.

Anne's uncle Jon was getting married in Colorado and much of the family was coming in and getting together for the occasion. Fortunately Anne's dad Rick, Anne, and I were able to fly out as well.

It was only my second flight anywhere. And it was my first time off the east coast at all. The flying was pretty easy. On the way out, we had a layover at Charlotte. No biggie. As we landed I'm instantly looking for mountains. "Where's the Rockies? Where are the Rockies!?!" No where. It was cloudy!

We left the airport and headed to Aunt Anita's (all family references are Anne's, not mine) who was hosting the rehearsal dinner. Anne had given me a small piece of paper with a number of names and lines with relationships scribbled. It started easily enough. Rick has parents and 4 brothers with wives. Then Anne added kids. And first wives. And their kids. And then the fact that Anita is actually the bride's aunt as well... making Jon (the groom) Anita's sister-in-law as well as aunt. By the end, the scrap of paper looked more like a football play than a family tree.

So finally getting to Anita's and studied well I was ready. I met aunts and uncles and grandparents. And then I met the bride's family as well (which I was not prepared for). Rick had warned me that meeting his brothers would be a lot of "fun" for him. I was worried. I expected a bit of sophomoric pranking and humor and humiliation. They sat me down in the center of the four brothers where they began the "deee-scusion." I learned fairly quickly that the right answers were the ones that reflected their taunts, insults, and embarrassment-invoking questions with equal immaturity. Needless to say I fit in quite well.

The wedding the next day was very nice. I have never attended a Catholic wedding before, and while it was a bit longer, it was just as nice. At the reception, they served a free mimosa. Aunt Debbie unfortunately noticed that Anne and I were the first two at the table to finish ours. Oops. We slipped on that first-impression test. Anne and I had a good time dancing and such.

After the wedding, we went over to the bride's family's house for a post-reception party. It was a casual party for Jon and Lori to open gifts. Jon offered some words of wisdom in the form of jokes. And when the night was finally done, we sent them off with cans attached to their car bumper.

Sunday the Maynards got together and we continued the jokes and food. The brothers settled down a bit and caught up on happenings with each family. As they left I got several comments saying that I passed the trial and would be accepted into the family :-) Aunt Sheri said they voted and I survived. I could see how that vote would go...

"Dave"

"Someone taller"

"Dave"

"Somebody with more money"

"Dave"

... Looks like the "Dave"s win.

As the weekend drew to a close, I got to see some mountains ... which were beautiful. Colorado is a really cool place. I got to see Denver's stadiums from a distance ... which was real neat. Anne and I got some cool wedding ideas.

The flight on the way back was just fine except that we were running behind. We were on some crappy-ass plane from Pittsburgh to Syracuse which sucked, but we arrived safely.

With the weekend all over Anne, Rick, and I had a great weekend meeting/visiting her family. I hope we see a bunch of them come over for our wedding next April.