Marcus and Sarah's Wedding

On July 12th, my little brother got married! Marcus and Sarah met at Calvin and have been together for about two years now. It was great to be a part of such a happy day. Since we haven't gotten to know Sarah very well living in different states, it was so nice to be able to spend time with her and her family prior to the wedding. I forget that as I have grown-up, Marcus has as well, and he will make such a wonderful, caring husband. We're very happy for both of them, and excited as they begin their life together in Chicago.

Bryant and I before the ceremony

A small group of the Byker family

Mom and Dad on the dance floor

Best Independence Day Ever.

We spent much of the July 4th weekend with our very good friends PJ and Kersta. We got the festivities started a bit early with a Thursday night trip to The Melting Pot for their signature "Goodnight Delight" special (this was our inspiration for Fondue Night 2007 and Fondue Night 2008).


Since we live about 40 minutes away from each other they spent the night at our place and we kicked off our 4th of July with the most patriotic breakfast I've ever had. My brilliant and hilarious wife got the idea to purchase ridiculous amounts of raspberries and blueberries and that we should then use them, along with a cake decorating device filled with home-made whipped cream, to decorate our pancakes in a patriotic fashion.


This is Becky's very impressive American Flag pancake.

PJ's blueberry star pancake.
Bryant's simple yet effective U.S.A. pancake.

Later that day we all headed down to PJ and Kersta's house in Denver. We then formed a bike gang, grabbed some firecrackers, and headed for downtown. We took a short break at Wash Park along the way and listened to a symphonic band play for a bit, and then took a very cool bike path that runs along a creek from Wash Park to downtown Denver.


The plan for the night was to hang out on the rooftop deck at Jackson's, a pub right by the stadium, where we would have a great view of the post-game fireworks, so we made our way to that area sometime during the 7th inning. While we were just hanging around in front of the stadium some random guy walks by and says "hey, you want some free tickets?" Our answer was of course yes. He only gave us three, so we bought another for $10 and all four of us headed into the stadium in time for the top of the 8th inning. They were fantastic seats.


When we walked in the Rockies were down 17-16, which as I'm sure you are aware is a ridiculous score for a baseball game. No runs were scored until the bottom of the 9th when the Rockies scored two to win the game 18-17. It was awesome - the near sellout crowd went crazy. We then had one of the best seats in the house for the best fireworks display in Denver. I hope everyone enjoyed their day off as much as we did.

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The Rumohr Cottage

Luke's parents own an amazing cottage in Buena Vista, CO and we had the privilege of joining Luke and Lindsay and his parents there for a very relaxing weekend. Luke and Lindsay had just finished a 5-day backpacking trip with Young Life and spent a couple of days at the cottage before heading off to Idaho to see Lindsay's family. We transfered control of Charles the Dog back to the Rumohrs after hanging out with him that week.


We had been to the cottage several times before during ski season but this was our first visit in the summertime. The picture below is the view of Mt. Princeton from the back deck of the cottage - just breathtaking. One of these days we are going to hike to the top...maybe next year.


Luke apparently likes to grill with his shirt off. It was a delicious meal and Luke and I ate way too many chicken wings and brats while the ladies mostly ate more sensible things like artichokes.


After eating way too much food Luke thought it would be a good idea for us to go to the pool at Frontier Ranch Young Life camp and go down the slide. Frontier Ranch is a very cool place. Becky and I had been there several times before with the middle school students from our church for winter camp. Again, it was nice to be there in the summer when you actually want to get in the pool and the slide is on.

Here's a nice pictures of Becky sunbathing by the pool after the sun went behind the clouds.


We are always very grateful to the Rumohrs for opening up their cottage to us and making us feel at home. We hope to have the chance to go again sometime soon.

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The Lost Creek Wilderness with Luke, Charles and Zoe

The week after our trip to Michigan we drove back to Colorado with Luke, one of my (Bryant's) best friends from college. We then spent three days in the Lost Creek Wilderness backpacking with our dogs, Charlie and Zoe. The picture below is of the dogs on day one, when they still had plenty of energy.

We ended up at McCurdy Park, one of the most amazing camping spots I've ever seen. It was so great we decided to just spend both nights of our trip there and decided to just do a day hike on day two. The next two pictures show some of the views from our campsite.
We had such a great time hiking and enjoying the incredible beauty of Colorado - I still can't believe I get to live here.

Here the dogs are starting to tire out a bit...

...and eventually they formed a mutiny against their owners and decided they were going to sleep instead of hike with us. (Please note: this pictures was not set up at all, they did this on their own).
In the end we covered about 24 miles in three days, had great conversation, enjoyed incredible scenery, and poor Charles left with some sort of intestinal situation which led to a nice vet bill for Luke. I hope we get the chance to do it again someday soon.

Michigan Trip Part 5: Sarah and Josh's Wedding

By far the best part of our week in Michigan was Sarah and Josh's wedding. All of the family and friends that had gathered in Holland from all over the country and the world (Switzerland and Canada were also represented) were just so full of happiness for the two of them.

As usual, the night before was the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner, which was held at Via Maria. The food was so great and a handful of family and friends offered very nice toasts to either the bride or groom, or both.

Sarah and me at the rehearsal dinner.

The wedding ceremony was so beautiful. Sarah and Josh decided to devote a significant portion of the service to worship through music. My dad gave the message which was just awesome and very personal to the two of them. My very talented Aunt Wendy wrote a song for them which she played during the lighting of the unity candle, as she had done for Becky and I when we got married. Becky and I both had the honor of standing up for them and we had such a great time being a part of the wedding party.

The new Loomis family (Grandma, Dad, Mom, Sarah, Josh, Wendy, Bryant, Becky).
After the ceremony the wedding party boarded a limo bus where we celebrated with champagne as the bus took us to the park where the pictures were taken.

As expected the reception was awesome. As I'm sure most of you are aware I love to dance, as does my sister and her many friends from Hope that were also dance majors. Needless to say the dance floor was bumpin'/rockin'/and any other silly word you can think of to insert.

In the end it was just such a great day, and everyone was just so happy for Sarah and Josh as they started their life together. Becky and I hope that someday we don't live so far apart because we really like them a lot and are very excited that Josh is now a part of the family.

Michigan Trip Part 4: Holland State Park

We spent quite a bit of time during the week hanging out with my parents at their campsite at Holland State Park and at the beach. My dad is a master at cooking delicious meals while camping and you can see how excited we all are to partake in the gigantic breakfast that is sitting on the picnic table in the picture below.


After a trip to the beach we did Becky's mandatory stop at the General Store for Chocolate Monster ice cream.

Michigan Trip Part 3: Family Reunion

Becky and I hadn't seen my parents since last Thanksgiving so we were looking forward to spending time with them while we were in Michigan. Also, prior to this trip, Becky had never met Marina, who was an exchange student from Switzerland who lived with my family when Sarah was a senior in high school. They became very close friends and to this day call each other "Swissters." I hadn't seen Marina since Christmas 2004 so we were all looking forward to having the whole family together for a week (including Josh- the newest member of the family).

We all met up at Crazy Horse for dinner and it was so great to have the whole Loomis + Josh + Marina family together for the first time ever.

At dinner Marina handed out gifts she had brought for everyone. Most of us got some very cool Euro 2008 gear (Switzerland and Austria co-hosted the tournament). Becky got a scarf from Guatemala (Marina is quite the world traveler) which you can seen in the picture above. Zoe didn't get any Euro 2008 gear but wanted to be in the picture anyway.