Surro-Sister Weekend

My weekend with Jeni in Colorado was awesome! We managed to see quite a bit considering I was there less than 48 hours! Colorado's landscape is very different from Florida's, so I have a few dozen "mountains in the distance" pictures. I won't torture you with them all!

Flying to Denver alone was pretty new for me too! I flew alone once when I was 16, and you may remember from previous posts, I've not flown much in my lifetime. In fact, with the surrogacy trips to New York/Connecticut, and my visit with Jeni, I will end up flying round trip 3 times in less than 90 days. That's as many times I'd flown in my entire life until now. :) So I'm walking through the Denver airport, feeling like a grown up, and pretty proud of myself for navigating an airport alone and not getting too scared on the flight...then I see this.

Excuse me?

And then I see them everywhere.

Women's Restroom. Tornado Shelter.

Men's Restroom. Tornado Shelter.

Baggage Claim. Tornado Shelter.

I felt for a minute like they were swirling around me, "Tornado Shelter" signs every where I looked. We rarely have tornadoes in Florida, and in my 31 now 32 years here, I have never seen a tornado or been involved in one. We mainly get hurricanes here. Slow, rainy hurricanes with plenty of warning. Like 4 days warning, and we all go to the store to buy canned food and bottled water, but instead come home with tequila and margarita mix for hurricane parties. I am not tornado kind of girl. But I took the picture of the sign (getting weird looks from women walking into the bathroom), and moved on. Good thing I didn't see this news article, published just TWO DAYS before I landed in the same airport! Yikes!

Jeni and I find each other in the airport, hugged and squealed, and then started talking. And pretty much didn't stop until she dropped me off at the airport on Sunday. I was even starting to lose my voice by the time we went to bed late Friday night! We talked about family, friends, and of course, surrogacy. Jeni had twins for two amazing daddies in New York just 19 months ago. If you can prepare yourself for cuteness overload, you really should head over to Jeni's blog to see the pictures of the family she helped create!

We went into Downtown Denver for dinner Friday night, and the city was really pretty. When we were leaving, we turned on to this street decorated with beautiful lights all the way across. According to Jeni, she had the city do that specifically for my birthday. ;)

We headed back to Jeni's condo, where her daughters were sweet enough to let me use their room for the weekend. My bedside table even had fancy chocolate truffles waiting for me. "Jeez, Mom, it looks like a hotel in here," the girls said. I'm not complaining!

Saturday we drove to Red Rock Park. It was gorgeous! I couldn't get over how high we were, and Jeni kept reminding me that we were only in the foothills. My ears kept popping on the drive up. I could see so far! Of course, pictures never do these kind of views justice, but it was amazing. The rocks look tiny in this picture, but that little gray line next to them is a road. That gives you some sort of idea of how big they were!

At the top, there was a beautiful amphitheater where crews were setting up for a concert later in the evening. Jeni said the rocks create amazing natural acoustics! There were so many people running/climbing the amphitheater steps for exercise. It looked like a ton of work! We stood there for a while and watched all the hot guys people working out.

My husband's response to the above photo: "WTF?!

That's a big ass rock and there's a bar in it! Sweet!"

We drove around for a little while, through a few mountain towns that were adorable, and then headed for lunch. There were so many places to eat outside, and the mountain view with the sunny weather (no humidity frizzing my hair!) made for a gorgeous weekend. 

I missed my family terribly (it was the longest I've ever been away from Austin in 15 1/2 years together!) and I was a teary mess when they were waiting for me at the airport with a bouquet of flowers! It felt so good to be home with my loves, but it was an awesome weekend with an awesome friend! The surrogacy world, and my agency Circle, is lucky to have her!

My little lovie was so happy with her souvenir rocks,
she dumped them right out in baggage claim. :)