There was a filibuster, sort of.

There were mock threats by lawmakers to jump out the window. There were jeers and cheers and jokes and flung rubber bands and even a not-so-serious challenge to fight.

Monday night, this is how laws were made in Colorado’s state Senate.

Long after all but the most ardent lobbyists and Capitol staffers called it a night – when the coats came off and the ties hung slack – things got a little slappy in the Senate.

Sen. Bill Cadman, a Colorado Springs Republican who was miffed that Senate Democrats were trying to bury his resolution asking for a fiscal analysis of the new oil and gas rulemaking, kicked off the night session by asking that bills be read in-full.

It wasn’t until the hoarse Senate reader was mostly through a 6-page bill on the child welfare system that the two parties called off their stalemate and Cadman was eventually allowed to run his resolution. (It failed on a party-line vote.)

Things got rowdier from there.

Senators playfully jeered each other from their seats. The aides lining the side of the chamber snickered with the jokes.

The Democrats running the session began to intentionally overlook Republicans – raising their hands urgently in the air like school kids and trying to vote no on a bill – only to recognize them just as the blood drained from their fingertips. A few Republicans responded by trying, unsuccessfully, to vote twice. Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, began casting his no votes with a ghostly mechanical toy hand that twitched its fingers.

In between the merriment, there were serious debates on issues as diverse as cancer screenings and health insurance regulation and election policies. These were, after all, still lawmakers, and there’s only so much fun you can have inside the bounds of parliamentary procedure.

At the end of the night, the Senate had passed and sent 31 bills to the governor for his signature, cutting its lengthy calendar by more than half and making the Wednesday deadline for the legislature’s adjournment suddenly seem achievable.

But perhaps the best moment of the night came around 9:45 p.m. when Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, moved that the Senate finally break for the day and come back at 10 a.m. on Tuesday – an hour later than normal.

The entire chamber burst into applause.