Things I did on my weekend vacation.

As a reward for having to look at my "Oh Crap! A jar of skin!" post for several days, may I present you with some images from my indescribably fantastic weekend in Colorado with Mr. Wonderful.

Sigh.

Let me just say this about the whole thing: When I got to work today (yes, I landed in Austin at 1:30 and was in a meeting by 2:30), I had no fewer than 3 people tell me how beautiful I looked...like I was glowing. And I had on zero makeup. Zero. And was wearing a white wife beater t-shirt and dirty jeans. THAT'S what a relaxing weekend with the one you love can do for you.

And now to our weekend:

We saw this Friday night after eating:

It was the world's coolest chrome cruiser. Boulder had about a gazillion bad ass bicycles rolling around. But this one was pretty spectacular.

Here we are at the top of the freakin' world. Literally. We drove up above the timberline (12,000+ ft.) into the arctic tundra terrain of Rocky Mountain National Park and tried to walk up a footpath to a lookout point. My lungs said, "NO!" so we landed on this rock instead. All I can say is wow. What an intensely gorgeous place. It was windy and cold and amazing. Thank God Mr. Wonderful had that pullover windbreaker, or my tits would've frozen and shattered. And that wouldn't have been fun at all.

Here's a little friend we made on our way down the mountain. Luckily, we had some tamari almonds with us (thanks Whole Foods!) to feed him and his buddies. He had LOTS of friends, and they weren't timid at all. In fact, they were borderline obnoxious. But I was thrilled because I hadn't seen chipmunks since I lived in Birmingham. Damn, they're cute as hell.

For nostalgia's sake, I purchased these while getting gas at a mini-mart in Estes Park. But then I looked at the ingredients list, and realized what a grown up I've become: Sno-Balls have "pork gelatin" and "beef fat" in them. Not to mention about a zillion different kinds of dyes. So there goes that. No more Sno-Balls for me. Ever.

Back at the Inn, Mr. Wonderful demonstrates what a waste of space this tub in the middle of the bedroom actually is. I mean, I'm all for the whirlpool action. But I like for my bathroom and bedroom to be a bit more separate than this was. I could literally reach my hand out from the bed and touch the faux marble on the tub area. What is this?! The damn Poconos? Anyway, we got a kick out of it (but not in the way that whomever decided to put it in there might have imagined).

Also, back at the inn, we saw some amazing sunsets. This was one of them from our patio. It was about 65 degrees and you could hear hummingbirds buzzing around overhead and Boulder Creek raging nearby. Amazing.

Next day, we stole the blanket off the bed at our inn and decided to go lay around in the park. This was our view from the ground.

And when we decided to sit up and take a look around, we saw this:

And we heard the laughter or children and smelled things being grilled and heard dogs barking and the creek rushing by.

Really. Boulder is so freakin' gorgeous. It's a seriously cool place to visit.

After lounging around, we decided to hike a bit and saw this (I know it doesn't look real, but trust me: we saw it):

The light was unreal. So crisp and bright. I knew my time here was coming to an end, so I drank it in deeply.

As the sun set, we hiked down and said goodbye to the rocks and sun.

I cried like a 2 year old today when we parted. This weekend was so "other." No place to be. No responsibilities. No baby monitors or alarm clocks. No air conditioners needed. Just pure relaxation. These photos only scratch the surface.

I am in love. All the way to my bones.