My Life Today: Sister's Visit

I am always thrilled when my sister comes to visit and recently she's been making it every year for my birthday. This year was no different. As usual, we had beautiful weather and a great time. I'll share more pics and less words in this post but before I tell you about Donna's visit, I need to share something else. My dear friend, Regina, is about the sweetest person who walks the face of the earth and I adore her. Apparently, her mom is just as sweet...I mentioned to Regina during their visit that I loved the scarves her mom had made for Regina and her friends at Christmas time. Well, lo and behold if I don't get two scarves in the mail last week. They are gorgeous, handmade and perfect for our Colorado winters. She made me a red one (I assume to match my red coat) and made me this blue one to match my eyes....isn't that just the sweetest!!!!!! Thanks Regina for mentioning and thanks Clara for your hard work and good heart.

Now I'm being lazy because my pics got uploaded in the opposite order that I wanted to talk about them but oh well, I'll have to tell the story backwards.

Here's Donna and I on Pearl Street in Boulder. It is an awesome pedestrian street with fun shops and restaurants. We did plenty of shopping then finished it off with a glass of wine at the historic Hotel Boulderado. The mall is a great place to hang out on a warm Saturday.

Here's my dear hubby and Donna giving me nice smiles for the camera.

Now this is where the story gets kind of backwards because on Friday, Donna and I woke up at the crack of dawn and headed down south to Manitou Springs. What's in Manitou Springs you ask? Well, you can take the cog railway to the summit of Pikes Peak. You may know this but Pikes Peak was the inspiration for "America the Beautiful" and it is a gorgeous ride up to the top. For 115 years, the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway (the world's highest cog train, the highest Colorado train AND the highest train in the United States) has taken passengers to the 14,110 foot summit of Pikes Peak.

Again, these pics are backwards but bear with me. Here's Donna and I on the train coming down the mountain.

We had snowy, foggy weather riding up, but the ride down had clearer weather and we were actually able to see some of the beautiful mountains surrounding us.

Here's Donna at the summit. We had gone right through the clouds on the railway, ending up above the cloud line. What a magnificent site!

Here's our view as we were coming up through the clouds...foggy and snowy below...sunny above.

Here's the longest straight part of the ride...you can see how foggy it is, although at this point, the visibility was starting to get better. It's a 1.5 hour ride up the mountain so there's plenty of time for weather changes.