Denver, where the souveniers are germs and tamiflu

Seven years ago my BFF of all time and forever got married and moved to Denver. I wanted to visit her for years but it never worked out. She came out to visit me a few times and we visited in MA in the summer but I never made it out west to her. I assumed it would cost several hundred dollars but low and behold, I found tickets for $97 round trip and we whipped together a last-minute visit. I've booked plane tickets dozens of times but I very seldom cross to a different timezone. That's why I didn't realize that arriving at midnight was the price I paid for such cheap flights. The website said we'd arrive at 9:40 which I thought was very reasonable. We ended up landing at 11:40 our time which meant we were both tired and very hungry. 

We special ordered some snow from Amazon prime and they really pulled through. AB and I were THRILLED. I miss snow so much. I don't love the bitter cold of winter but I love watching the snow fall and taking walks in the quiet.

I'll be honest- the trip did NOT go as we planned. We had so many fun things planned but they were all derailed when sweet Kezia came down with the flu. Instead of hiking and ice skating, we were quarantined to the house for the first several days. With each day that passed, Kezi got sicker and Annabelle got more cabin fever. On Wednesday we really reached the peak of things going wrong. We ventured out to the library and coffee shop while Katie took Kezi to the doctor. While Katie was at the pharmacy, she got an SOS from a neighbor asking her to watch their son while they went to the er. I stayed back at her house with the girls. Kezi could barely reach her cup without help and kept crying for her mom. Annabelle had enough energy for seven children. She knocked over three drinks, did backflips, bounced on a ball, spilled beads, threw pipe cleaners around "like snow" and made a ruckus. We had a runaround with doctors offices trying to get Annabelle and I Tamiflu to take as a preventative. After speaking to multiple doctors and being told we could get a prescription, I went to the pharmacy to pick it up but it had not been called in. We ended up rationing Kezi's prescription between the three of us like we were living in a war-torn country with no medicine instead of a first world country with laws about transferring prescriptions across state lines. The day would not end. Katie and I kept saying if only we could make it to bedtime we could sit on the couch and watch a show. Kezi must have caught wind our of relaxation plans because a few minutes into Wonder Woman, she suddenly got worse and Katie was on the phone with the doctor at 10:30pm. We tried so hard to Wonder Woman our way through the day. We made it by the skin of our teeth, but our hair didn't look nearly as good as hers. 

All that being said, I am 1000% glad we went out to visit. Kezi started to feel a little better on our second to last day so we took a trip to Ikea for bedroom decor. We went to the children's museum and the girls had a blast. We were so happy they had some good play time before we left. Finn is a doll and he's the first baby Annabelle really paid attention to and wanted to hold. Last time we saw him he had several baby chins and now he's turning into a little boy.

There's no one I can laugh with like I can with Katie. Even though almost nothing went as we planned, we had some great talks and laughed until we cried and couldn't breathe which is my absolute favorite kind of laughing. This visit was the first time I had seen her husband since they got married and he had the great fortune of seeing us in rare form. He had a very similar look to Christopher's the first time he experienced us together. It's a cross between confusion and impressed that two grown women can laugh so loudly/long and communicate using so few words.

Katie is such a wonderful mother and I loved seeing her in her own home. We took a grand total of one picture of ourselves during the entire trip but it's not great. I look like a beached seal and Katie's hair looks like a founding father's wig. We've been friends for almost 30 years so I'm allowed to make comments like that. 

I hope it won't be another seven years before we make it to Denver again, but it for sure won't be during flu season.