In Real Life

Last week, Jesse and I had the immense pleasure of finally meeting some friends of ours... in real life.  We've known "Echo" and his wife Holly since a few years before they even met and got married.  When Jesse and I were still newlyweds, Jesse somehow managed to get me hooked into gaming.  Well, okay.  I suppose I had some predisposition to gaming, battling my Mom in Tetris as a teenager, working my way through Super Mario Brothers 3 (but chickening out at the stress of trying to beat the very last Bowser fight, sigh).  He and I used to play Diablo together, between our computer and his Dad's computer when we lived with them for a few months.  And then when we moved into our own home, it wasn't long before Diablo II came out, and whaddya know- they included online gaming for free!  It wasn't long before we took the plunge into the world of online gaming together.  And there is where we first met Echo, roughly 9 or 10 years ago.  He became our guild leader, and has always been one of the most fair-minded, easy-going, fun-loving people I've ever known on the internet.  It wasn't long at all before he seemed like a fast friend to us.  Years later when we all started playing World of Warcraft together, we got to know his voice through the use of headsets and microphones in-game.  Even later, we got to know his face and his wife's face, and then his wife's voice as they had their lovely daughter and shared pictures and videos online.  We've been friends on Facebook for a good year, too, getting to know each other even more.

So when Echo (fine! Matt! I have a hard time referring to him by his real name!) and Holly headed left their home in Oregon to come visit her family in Colorado for vacation, and offered to meet a whole bunch of friends, of course Jesse and I jumped on the bandwagon.  How could we pass up the chance?

We drove to a park in Denver as sort of a middle-ground meeting location, and hung out for a good 2 hours just chatting and letting the kids play.  The little trip was so well worth it.  Matt and Holly are great, and just the same people I've come to know online all these years.  It's nice that we've been able to keep in touch through forums and Facebook, since Jesse and I have stopped playing games online for quite some time now.

Melinda and Mia playing in the playground sand.  Melinda dug a hole that became a horse den.  Mia later made "bowls" for soup... one of which included a pink pony.

Melinda was quite enthusiastic about pushing Mia in the swing.

Matt and Jesse chatting.  Presumably about video games, lol.

Jacob took this picture.  Not bad!

Another picture courtesy of Jacob.  Mia, Holly, Matt, myself, and Jesse, with Alex throwing himself in the forefront!

We're all laughing here - Jacob did something funny with the camera, I think.

Jesse talks to Matt (not pictured) while Melinda and Mia work on one of their holes.

Melinda took this picture of Jacob on the playground.

Alex goes down the slide...

...Followed quickly by Melinda...

...And followed by Jacob.  They love to go down and bump into each other at the bottom.

Melinda and Jacob showing me how they hang from the bars.

Jacob took this picture of Melinda!  (They really loved having control of the camera...)

Jacob snaps one last picture of Mia before we head home.

It really was so nice to meet Matt and his family in person.  It's awesome that we've had the pleasure of meeting so many good people over the years through our games.  Maybe in another few decades we'll have finally met them all.  ;)