My mom, Maxwell’s GJ, is one special person.  I knew I wanted to do something fun for her 60th birthday and I thought a trip to Aspen was just the thing!  I have been to Aspen in fall in the past and I knew it would be a great place to take her.  Considering she doesn’t get much fall in Florida, I suspected that she would LOVE seeing the fall leaves and breathing in the crisp, cool mountain air!  My suspicions were confirmed the moment she stepped off the plane in Aspen…

Grinning from ear to ear!  It was a FANTASTIC trip from start to finish!

The trip started out on Thursday with a bang – in the Denver airport we saw the former Bachelorette Trista with her husband Ryan and their two kids. Apparently their little boy’s name is Maxwell because it said it on his monkey backpack. I knew they were cool. Then we realized that Steve Forbes was on our flight from Denver to Aspen…our commercial flight. Not sure what that says about the economy! We later figured out that he was actually staying in our hotel. I think that says that we picked a nice hotel! 🙂  After arriving in Aspen, we were just walking around town, checking things out and who did we see? Ron Howard!  Opie himself was sitting on a bench talking on his cell. Celeb sightings were a great way to kick things off!

Like I just said, our hotel, The Little Nell, was ridiculous. It was possibly the neatest hotel room I’ve ever been in. My mom and I each had our own room and I think we had enough room for 20 people between the two of us. Heaven! And this was our view of Aspen Mountain out the window…

Not too shabby!

Thursday night we had dinner at the hotel at Montagna and it was delicious. The hotel knew that it was my mom’s birthday and we ended up with free wine and dessert…nice!

The next day we grabbed a muffin from Paradise Bakery and took in this view…

The perfect way to start the day!

We then rented bikes and biked the Rio Grande Trail.  It’s a 9 mile ride out to a great lunch spot called Woody Creek Tavern.  The ride out is pretty easy and mostly downhill…which means the ride back is not quite as easy and uphill!  We persevered though and made it with only a few stops!  🙂

Everything along the trail was just gorgeous…

and we even saw some guys fly fishing.

I used the self timer on my camera to take a picture of the two of us…

I think it’s a framer, don’t you?

After 9 miles, we finally made it to Woody Creek…

and I had this plate of yum for lunch…

Maybe, just maybe, that was part of the reason the ride back was a little more difficult than the ride there!  We ended up taking a few breaks to take in the scenery and enjoy it all…we were in no hurry!

We then tried again with the self-timer on my camera and got a much better result!

Now that really is a framer!

We were so proud of ourselves for biking 18 miles!  We celebrated later that afternoon with a cookie from Paradise Bakery and then had a great dinner (with terrible service) at Matsuhisa. Considering how badly I wanted good sushi (something that does not exist in B’ham), I didn’t even care about the super delayed sea bass that we ended up canceling. I think we were also too tired to care!  We were back in our rooms by 8:30 and happily called it a night!

While I was gone, Robert was at home holding down the fort (with a little help from Susan on Thursday and Friday). Now, I know you come to this blog to see pictures of Maxwell and not pictures of me and GJ (but we are cute, aren’t we?!) so I’m going to show you all the fun pictures that Robert sent to me while I was away. Let me tell ya, when you’re missing your baby, there’s nothing better than seeing his smiling face come through in an email!

The boys had a big time while I was gone!

Tomorrow – hiking, the gondola and Maroon Bells!  See you then!