A Late Birthday Gift

 For my birthday, Jessi had asked me what I wanted to do and I told her I wanted to go to the Botanical Gardens up in Denver - never mind that it took 2 months to get it on the schedule!  But it was FINALLY time to go!  Since Glenn absolutely loves plants and gardening, Jessi said he could come too!

We headed up to Denver at 6:00am on a Thursday to beat some of the traffic and we actually had no slowdowns!  The 3 of us got coffee to go and headed to the gardens as soon as we arrived!  They do reservations with staggered times and our time to go in was 9:20 - it wasn't crowded at all so that was nice!

I love these colored pepper plants!

Glenn had gotten a new app on his phone that you can take a picture of a plant and it shows what it is and all kinds of things about the plant - he had a ball taking pictures!

The water garden features were amazing - they were my favorite!

I love this plant - to me it looks like a finger up in the air!

This is a Chihuly display when you first walk in - I LOVE his glass work!  I told Jessi she matched so had to take a picture in front of it!

Another beautiful flower display in the water!

I did like that there were several shady spots to walk through and even sit down if you needed to!

This display was amazing - those huge round things with the edges lifted up are actually water lily pads!  Aren't they cute?

Jessi and I decided this was the PERFECT spot to bring our books and sit and read - it's tucked away behind all this foilage!

This was inside  - a lot of the tropical plants were in here and it was beautiful!!

Was it hot at the gardens?  OMG - we wore VERY cool clothes as it was supposed to reach 95 degrees!  When we left, it was 102!!!!  Gosh that air conditioner in the car felt great - we were DONE with the heat!

Jessi ended up taking us out to lunch at The French Press, a place she had been wanting to try!  It was great and I enjoyed eating the rest of mine the next day!  

I walked with Jessi to pick up Gwyn after school and wasn't even sure I was going to make it back because it was SO HOT!!  It's funny how it affects you when you're not used to it!  We ate an early dinner and then it was onto the evenings activities!!